


price and zeller are (surprisingly not dead)

by starstruckmoons



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Attempt at Humor, Backstory, But it can be if you want it, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Character Study, Found Family, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, I don't care #loveislove, I know z&p nation is working with crumbs, Inspired by Fanfiction, Missing Scene, Multi, References to Hamlet, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Stand Alone, Team Sassy Science (Hannibal), That's what ragad is sorry, canon-typical dark humor, not really a romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:13:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 34,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26902693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starstruckmoons/pseuds/starstruckmoons
Summary: Showing events from the point of view of two minor characters from Hannibal, two characters who have no control over their destiny, this fic examines fate and asks if we can ever really know what's going on? Are answers as important as the questions? Will Price and Zeller (or Zeller and Price) manage to discover the identity of the Chesapeake Ripper? Does Will Graham ever come out and just date his therapist already? And what does flipping a coin have to do with fate?A.K.A. tom stoppard please do not sue me i'm literally broke and writing fic about two white men how do you think that reflects upon my mental health?
Relationships: Jimmy Price/Brian Zeller, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 46
Kudos: 94





	1. Chapter 1

"I don’t get it.”

“Tails.”

Zeller looked over at Price, exhaustion already beginning to show in the shadows of his face. It felt as though they had been there forever, and in some way, he supposed they had been. Always relegated to the background while cases continued without them, an overhyped psychic taking their place. No two murders were alike, and yet, one could always bet on Will Graham to have everything figured out, just as one could always bet to find Zeller and Prize flipping coins somewhere until Jack Crawford came calling for them like an overbearing mother.

“How many is that?” Zeller asked, staring at the coin which rested flat on the table.

“Eighty-seven, I think. Then again, it might be Eighty-eight,” Jimmy responded, his sentence ending in an upward cadence as it always did when his brain went somewhere else. “Don’t fact-check me, though.”

“Jesus Christ,” Zeller chuckled, getting up from his seat. He walked over towards the door, which Will had closed on him just minutes ago. “I guess the Prince needs extra time today.”

“Not a very exact science, is it?” Jimmy said, his words falling just as though they had come from Zeller’s mouth.

“Honestly? Feels like nothing is these days. I’ll never get what Jack sees in him.” But there was no saying that to Jack Crawford, no, any word against Will was taken as misguided envy, especially when coming from Zeller. It wasn’t an entirely unfair assumption, hell, Brian was jealous of Will in some way, but there was no denying that what he did should have been scientifically impossible at the very least. “There is no way you got tails eighty-eight times.”

“Last time I got tails ninety.”

“No. I get that, asshole. I’m saying it defies probability.”

“Well, the side with Lincoln’s head is heavier than the flip side, causing the coin’s center of mass to lie closer to heads. It only makes sense that it would land on tails more often.”

Zeller paused, turning away from the door to shoot a look at Jimmy. Had he not known better, he would have accused Jimmy of cheating, if not giving up on courtesy altogether and strangling him, but years of working together allowed you to know someone. Jimmy was for sure eccentric and almost always in his head, but he wasn’t a cheater. Not with this anyways.

“Flip it again.”

“Tails.”

“Again.”

“Tails.”

“Again.”

“Heads.”

Could it have been?

“Wait, no, tails.”

Zeller buried his face into his hands, wondering if it was better to throw himself out of a window now, or if that was something to be done during his own time. He assumed the latter. The best-case scenario was he died. Worst case? Jack and Alana would have fun lecturing him about damaging the crime scene or whatever they called it these days.

“Oh, shut the fuck up, Bri,” Zeller mumbled to himself.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” Zeller said, removing his face from his hands to look at the coin again. “You know what? I have faith. Law of probability and whatnot.”

“Law of probability?”

“Yeah, I mean like,” He paused, searching his head for an analogy, “Like if you put some m&m’s in a bag. Sooner or later, you’re bound to get a red one.”

“Hmm. Unless you get a skittle.”

Zeller inhaled. Then he looked at Price. Then, as he sat down and closed his eyes, he just gave in to the fact that life was a fucking nightmare and there was seemingly no escape. “When the fuck did I mention skittles?"

Zeller could feel the start of a pain growing in his head. It wasn’t uncommon to get headaches, especially when the time that could be was spent actually working was spent sitting around aimlessly for the murder psychic to solve things. You know? The one with no qualifications besides the fact that he had no social skills and an affinity for serial killers. Completely normal stuff!

Jack had said one that Zeller looked to Will as the root of his problems. It wasn’t entirely wrong, Zeller did blame a lot on Will, but if the shoe fit….

“Just flip the thing again.” Zeller continued, after a moment. The table was cold against his hands, and the room silent. Then a coin could be heard falling into place.

“Tails.” Fuck. “It’s getting a bit boring if I'm being completely honest,” Jimmy asked, in a way that was somehow more irritating than Brian’s actual headache.

“Boring?” Zeller asked, “Could it be any more boring than sitting here while Will plays tea party with the corpse?”

“I mean.”

“What about suspense, dude?”

“Exactly what suspense are we referring to? The suspense of always getting the same result?”

Zeller opened one eye, expecting to see one of Price’s shit-eating grins that came out when he was playing dumb, but none was there. In reality, Zeller couldn’t entirely remember if there had been a shit-eating grin in the first place. He closed his eyes, uncertain.

“This is absurd.”

“Actually, it’s a new record, but sure.” Price defended.

“A new record. Right,” Zeller mumbled to himself, “And what would you have done if I won?”

Price paused for a second, lingering on the question, then decided. “Well, I would check your coin for a start!”

Zeller laughed, partly because he felt like he was losing his mind, but mostly because somehow his friends always had a way of making things better. His irritation melted to happiness, then happiness to confusion. He loved his friend dearly, even in moments like these, moments where he would have shaken with rage if it were anyone else, but there was still something wrong about the situation. He couldn’t remember when he had arrived there. He couldn’t remember arriving at all. It was as though there had only ever been this time his mind, as though there would only ever be this time.

“What’s the first thing you remember?”

“I don’t know,” Jimmy started, “It was a long time ago.”

“Not like that. I mean, what’s the first thing you remember?"

“What?”

“Are you happy?” Brian asked, finally opening his eyes and leaning in towards Jimmy, “Content? At ease?”’

“I suppose,” Jimmy said, his eyes trailing to the left. He was digging for something. Zeller wasn’t sure what. “As happy as one can be doing inhaling dead body smell for a living.”

“And what do we do now?”

“What do you want to do?”

What did Zeller want to do?

There was the horror of it, Zeller realized. He didn’t know. He hadn’t ever known.

“I feel like I’m interrupting something here.”

Zeller leaned back into his chair and looked over to the voice. Beverly. It was her same cadence. It was her same rhythm, a rhythm that seemed to move quicker than anybody else’s, and in all the things that made up Beverly’s voice, this was the crown. It would never fail to stand out in a crowd. Beverly was important, and she sounded important.

Zeller wasn’t sure if he could say the same for himself.

“Fuck you. Is Will done playing ghost charades now?”

“Ghost charades? That’s a new one,” Beverly sighed, though it was clear that a part of her wanted to laugh.

“Not an entirely inaccurate one.” Price chimed in, only earning a stern look from Beverly in turn.

“You mean like how you and Jimmy were playing Married couple?”

“Woah, Woah, Woah. First of all, Bev, we know I’m way too cool and sexy to settle down. Secondly-”

“I’m out of his league.”

Zeller paused to shoot an offended look at Price who he already knew was responding through movement. "Plus, tragically, Jim's not my type."

“So what exactly is your type? Besides the obvious women who break your heart," Beverly responded, smiling.

"Ouch. I thought we agreed not to mention the whole FL situation, not going to lie," Brian laughed, almost pained. "I mean, you're not wrong. Also Paul Rudd."

“Hey, I get it.” Beverly conceded, “I mean badass women are hot. Not the weirdly specific Paul Rudd thing."

“Hey, your loss. Dude's funny, hot, and loaded.”

“You know, for an allegedly straight man you are both really excited and prepared to talk about why you would marry Paul Rudd.”

“Yeah, well I've put a lot of thought into my dream Rudd-Zeller wedding," Brian started. "Also guys who feel the need to affirm their straightness every ten seconds just because they found another dude hot are just the worst. We all know you're kissing your improv comedy partner behind the scenes, we all know your partner felt unloved, we all know the tension turned into a big argument that ended badly, and we all know it's why the group broke up. Nobody cares."

“Okay. Bitter. Are you speaking from experience?" Beverly asked, an eyebrow raised. Zeller hated it when she did that. Which is exactly why she did it, of course.

Zeller smiled gently and said. "Wouldn't you like to know?" Then, the calm smile turned into his regular joking grin. "I like to keep you guys wondering. Besides my scandalous past love life is really a season 4 plotline anyway."

"Right, sure, oh the suspense." Beverly said, with a smirk. "Anyways, Jack said we’re free to go so do you guys wanna get something to eat?”

“I could go for a salad,” Jimmy said, not-so-subtly popping back into the conversation once it was convenient for him. Fucker.

“And I could go for anything but that,” Zeller added, standing up. “I’ll drive?”

“Yeah, over my dead body.” Beverly snorted exiting, with Zeller and Price following behind.

It felt as if they were going nowhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is my first hannibal fanfic please be nice also i hope this feeds the zeller and price fans :') i know i personally wanted more content from them so i hope this will suffice !! anyways you should maybe leave a kudos and a comment because i put an embarrassing amount of work into this and yeah!! ily all and hope you have a lovely day <3


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is short but im gay and have no money so

How to tell the world was falling apart.

You start with an ear left in a sink, an ear from Abigail Hobbs it’s whispered. An ear in a sink, still colorful with life, as though its owner would come to claim it any second. It sits alone until all photographs are taken, bags brought in. It sits until Zeller alone manages the situation. Zeller, because he could see in Beverly’s face that the thought made her too ill, that she was still reeling and would be for the next while. Zeller, because he had given Price a look that could only mean “take care of her,” and he readily obliged. That was what family did, be there for each other, even when the going gets tough.

You continue on in a lab, one which has always felt cold, but never this cold. It is silent in a way that it had never been before, in a way that was as dead as the young Abigail Hobbs, and Marissa Schurr. It is the looking through leather wallets which had been obligatory birthday gifts, the tools picking at fingers and scraped into nails. It is the cold stares that leave you wanting to lash out in anger, that burns throats as much as it burns ties between workers. It is guilt. A room with only guilt to keep it full.

Zeller wonders if it will ever be the same again.

He had sat for hours as a child, thinking of ways the world could end: nuclear wars, an asteroid strike, the ever-warming planet. There were millions of ways, each reasoned by science, tangible. There were those less scientific theories, of course: a zombie apocalypse or killer sharks. As a kid, you could play out the world’s end vividly, each time more gruesome and imaginative than the last. What nobody ever said about the world ending as an adult was how mundane it could be: a death in the family, a relationship ending poorly, a co-worker with blood on his hands.

The days after were a blur or they were for everybody else. “This is a profound loss,” Hannibal says one day, but it never feels like a profound loss. It feels like an accident waiting to happen, like predictions that had been brushed off as envy. It felt more like screaming and nobody ever caring to hear, then being dismissed again when things fell apart.

“You feel like a Cassandra right now, don’t you, Brian?” Hannibal asks.

“Like a who?” And it’s a disinterested reply. Zeller had never cared much for extended metaphors and words of condolence, especially right now.

“In Greek mythology, she had a prophetic dream, some would say.” And Hannibal paused, a feeling of superiority lingering even in his silence. “She tried to warn everyone of the danger that she saw, but no one would listen. Until it was too late, that is.”

“No.” And it’s a lie, but one that Zeller can handle. “I don’t really care about mythology.”

The world ended just as they did in myths, or at least as Hannibal claimed they did. Zeller sat back as a Cassandra, trying to warn others but doomed to remain unheard and unseen. There isn’t much he can remember about mythology, but he remembers fate. It was fate that had condemned the demigods and mortals alike, and it was fate that could never be avoided.

Maybe it was Zeller’s fate to mean nothing.

Maybe it was his fate, as it had been Will’s fate to be a killer.

What was there to do when you couldn’t tell which was worse?

Slowly things begin to retake shape. Quiet hallways start to feel alive again, carried by playful laughs and mock flirting with Beverly. During car rides, Price is back to echoing random facts that he had heard, facts which you couldn’t really care less about, but that you still made sure to remember. There’s a movie night, then two, then three, and even if none of you feel entirely safe, at least you are unsafe together. No longer is everyone alone in the universe; it is back to being BeverlyBrianandJimmy as it always had been.

At least it’s what Zeller tells himself.

Hannibal is around more. Creating profiles as though he and Will shared one mind, one body. He never fits in, he never will, but it becomes clear that Jack needs something to cling to now more than ever. He lost Will, and even though it was never said aloud, WIll was like family to him. So, Jack found the next best thing: if he couldn’t look into Will’s eyes without being faced with a killer, then maybe Hannibal would be enough.

“You’ve been quiet lately, no?”

Zeller turned to see Hannibal standing over him. It was as though he had always been there, standing before the walls of the building first rose to remain forever. It was one of those things that Hannibal did a lot; one of those things always brushed off as a quirk or sign of his superior intellect. Unsurprisingly it was also one of those things that pissed Zeller off.

“Believe it or not, I can do that.”

“Of course. I was simply wondering if something was off.”

“I’m sorry,” Zeller laughs, for a second feeling as though sandpaper was at the back of his throat. “Just to be clear, we’re both on the same page about the murder thing, right? This isn’t exactly some normal situation.”

“Unprecedented, yes. However, I would argue that although it is a great tragedy, it is entirely normal.”

“And what exactly is normal about finding out you worked with a killer, Dr. Lecter? Because if you could point out one thing that makes this less fucked up then I'm all ears.”

“It’s the natural order of life, Brian. One can do blood and love without rhetoric, and one can do blood and rhetoric without love, and one can do all three concurrent or consecutive, but you can't do love and rhetoric without blood.” Another pause, and for a second, Zeller can swear he sees Hannibal smiling, as though this was his plan all along. “Blood is compulsory - they're all blood, you see. Humans live, and we live to die. It is a simple cycle. It’s what the job entails.”

“No. Most people aren’t like this. Most people don't want this.”

“Wants only get people so far. Killing is as much a matter of nature as death. It is simply what must be done.”

For a second, Zeller can see a boat in his mind, drifting far from the mainland with only Price on the shore alongside him.

As the boat drifts, the shadows of Beverly and the others fade into a foggy night.

He wonders if he will ever get aboard.

Or could he already be dead?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hiiii omg chapter two <3 yaaas you should so leave a kudos and comment pls because i love interacting with you guys and also i put a sad amount of work into this. also y'all should totally send this to your zeller and price stan friends because i'm bad at social media <3 love you guys lots!! thank you for the reads and lovely comments stay safe! :) 
> 
> ps: if yall would ever be interested in a zeller themed playlist comment and maybe i'll include it with the final chapter of the fic


	3. Chapter 3

“All I’m saying is I don’t see how Little Shop of Horrors is a one-to-one metaphor for capitalism.”

“Well then clearly you haven’t seen the movie.”

“It’s about a plant!”

“That is symbolic of the American dream!”

“Beverly?”

Zeller and Price turned their heads, almost perfectly in-sync, to look at Beverly who had gone quiet for some time now. She was seated on the other couch, curled up under a fuzzy blanket, which had become her staple throughout the past few weeks. Beverly had her blanket, Jimmy had his carefully seasoned though somewhat disgusting popcorn, and Brian had his energy drinks which were almost certainly filled with enough caffeine to power a horse. In other words, it was a new normal. There was a sense of security in the little routines that had been created, even if they were all scared out of their minds. 

If they were scared then at least they could be scared together.

Wasn’t that enough?

“I’m gonna have to side with Jimmy on this one,” Beverly mumbled as she sat up, a groggy smile on her face. It had been rare to see her smiling these days, it had been rare to see any of them smiling these days, so this was a nice break. “Sorry, Bri.”

“Ha!”

“Agree to disagree then.”

“Sore loser,” Jimmy coughed, resulting in another one of Brian’s signature glares.

“Do you want to repeat that? I think you want to-”

“Oh no. I’m good.”

“Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

“Wow. You really are a sore loser, dude,” Beverly said in a voice that would have passed for shock had Zeller not been so familiar with her taunts. She was about to say more, or at least she was before a pillow went flying across the room and landed straight on her face.

“I thought we established a no pillow throwing rule,” Jimmy stated, grinning wide as though he already knew what that statement would bring.

“Oh yeah? Fuck you!” Brian replied, pulling the pillow from behind his head and throwing it in the direction of Jimmy who caught it in perfect time, before proceeding to whack Zeller several times. At some point Beverly joined in too, hitting Zeller’s arm with the pillow that had been tossed at her and they were all laughing like things were good again.

There was a feeling that came with laughter, a sort of burning feeling that made you feel like you could live forever if you closed your eyes long enough. It was the same feeling of hot beverages in the winter, leather jackets that were gifted for birthdays, and Toto lyrics screamed at the top of your lungs. It was the same feeling of karaoke nights that went on until the morning and the resulting embarrassing photos that would always be kept behind a password or in the back of photo albums. It was fleeting immortality, which didn’t exactly make sense, but nothing really had these past few weeks so fuck it, right? If life had no meaning this had to give it meaning, right?

They laughed until they went quiet. Until Beverly wandered back to her couch and Zeller had to let go of her hand, until she handed a pillow back to Jimmy who pushed it aside, until once again everything felt empty and wrong and Zeller was back to that feeling of anger which could only arise with knowing everything had been changed. That life which was once messy to outsiders but perfect to you was completely destroyed.

If he closed his eyes he could still see that boat. He doesn’t know where it’s going. He doesn’t know if he wants to.

Fear has side effects which aren’t often described. Side effects which included giving your best friends a house key in case one day you weren’t able to feed your pet cat or turn off your TV yourself, side effects which included taking as many pictures as you could just so you never run the risk of losing faces, side effects which included losing each other despite best efforts.

“There’s still a killer on the loose,” Beverly spoke after sometime, staring down at the coffee table. It was cluttered, stained with rings from breakfasts spent between friends. It held memories.

Memory wasn’t enough.

“I know I keep trying to say this. I don’t think it’s Will Graham.”

Those words hang in the air, crushing every bone in Zeller’s body. He wants to yell. He had always been quick to anger but that anger felt even more present these days. He couldn’t tell if it was just or not. He couldn’t even tell if the anger was his to have but it has to be Will Graham. It has to be Will Graham because that’s all that fucking makes sense, it has to be Will Graham because Will Graham is in prison and that means that Beverly and Jimmy and Jack are safe. It has to be Will Graham, even if it’s not, even if all evidence is starting to point away from him because even if it isn’t Will Graham it’s his fault and it always had been.

“Can we not do this,” Zeller mumbles, bringing his energy drink to his lips. He hasn’t been sleeping. Has anyone these days?

“Z, you can’t tell me you don’t see the evidence.”

“The evidence is that Will Graham fucking coughed up Abigail Hobbs' ear. The evidence is that Will Graham had the remains of Dr. Sutcliffe in his fishing lures. You saw him, Bev, he's not stable!”

“I’m starting to think you aren’t either!”

There was the sound of a glass shattering somewhere, maybe one that Zeller had imagined, but real or fake there was no denying that sound was there. Maybe it was trust being broken. Maybe it was a friendship ending. Maybe it was the start of a chapter closing, the last good one in a while.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Zeller stated, getting up from the couch without a second look. If he looks back now he’ll crumble and everybody knows it so he doesn’t. He only looks ahead and keeps walking.

“So, I guess our merry trio is down to two,” Beverly comments when Zeller is out of earshot, almost bitter.

“Mmm.”

“Not you too.”

“Well, I’m not with Brian. But I’m also not not with him," Jimmy pauses. "Being an ass doesn’t make him any less right.”

“Jimmy,” Beverly starts, leaning forward to look at him. If it were any less dark in the room maybe Price would have seen her desperation, that fire in her eyes that shone brightest when she was certain. “You can’t tell me you aren’t more curious. I know you. You see the inconsistencies. How can you just let that fly?”

“There aren’t inconsistencies, Bev, not damning ones. All Will Graham has is his testimony. We have an ear.”

“Will isn’t a cannibal.”

“He sure has the diet of one.” Jimmy jokes. He can’t see Beverly well but he can feel how she draws back into herself in a way that she never had before. He can tell he has messed up but a part of his mind whispers that things were always going to be this way, that no matter what there was no right answer. “You need to rest. We all do. I mean Bri hasn’t anger peed since-”

“Jack beat him out on the last question at trivia?” Beverly adds, the sound of a smile starting to become clear in her voice again. “God. That was a classic. Didn’t he spend like 20 minutes after moping too?”

“If by moping you mean browsing every Star Wars forum made in the past 10 years to try and prove Jack wrong, then yes, moping.”

“I mean it was better than when he got ghosted by FL.”

“Was it though? Was it really?”

“Probably not, because you could hardly make fun of me for Star Wars.” Zeller interrupted, all of his anger seemingly gone. He sat down beside Beverly with a smile and leaned into her until she laughed. “I mean, Bev so could. She’s smart and badass and I’m like totally in love with her forever. You’re just as bad as me, Spock.”

“I’m hardly a Spock actually more a-”

“Oh my god. You two are the exact same people.” Beverly groaned, pushing Zeller off her with a smile. “I could literally look at you two and I’m sure at some point your faces will blend into each other.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s a Star Trek episode,” Zeller joked, putting an arm around her.

“More interesting than anything that has happened in Star Wars.”

"Mm. No. Star Wars has action, romance, actually good plots. Star Trek just has alien sex.”

“Yeah, but the prequels were horrible besides Revenge of the Sith so your talking point is invalid,” Beverly commented as she got up from the couch, leaving Zeller to fall behind without her. “It’s getting late. I’ve got to go.”

“You’ll call me when you make it home?” Zeller asked, sitting up.

“And me too, considering I'm the responsible one here,” Jimmy added. It was a new protocol. One that had only been added after the murders had gotten nearer. Just in case they said. Just in case.

“Of course." Beverly smiled. "You two don’t stay up too late. Jack was pissed last time you both came into work tired.”

“I have my energy drinks so-”

“I will make sure Brian doesn’t die of an energy drink overdose,” Jimmy interrupted, glaring at Zeller before once again looking at Bev.

This was their family. Their own little family.

So why did it feel like Beverly was so far away already?

“Alright. I love you two goofballs. I’ll see you in the morning ZP.”

“Love you.” The two spoke in-sync as though they had become one.

As though even if you looked closely you couldn’t tell which was which.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hii okay thank you for reading this far!! i love reading all of your feedback and aaa yeah thank you guys for the support <3 as always feel free to leave a kudos or comment and bookmark if you want to stay updated!! may take a little break from posting next week but don't worry the chapters have been written and I will not leave you all hanging. there's so much more in store for z&p!!


	4. Chapter 4

There were many things that happened in hallways.

A boss briefing his team on the latest gruesome murder,  
Early morning conversations about coffee that was far too bitter and failing sports teams,  
A chorus of laughs erupting in an attempt to shrug off the weight of a case.

There are rumors that there are sometimes ghost in these hallways,  
Late at night searching for a loved one or lost body.  
“There’s a lot of death here,” Jimmy says on a Halloween, “I wouldn’t be shocked.”  
Zeller isn’t convinced.

There are other things that happen in hallways. Things that were less common.

“Are you feeling this?” Zeller jokes when Beverly crosses his path.  
“Totally,” She responds, feigning complete seriousness.  
“Like what are we doing? Let’s just get a drink.”   
He puts a hand on Bev’s waist, the two start to laugh.

As Zeller spins her, the two don matching smiles.  
The smiles are not over when they break apart.

There are rumors of course, though those are to be expected.

There’s the “Do you love her?” For which Zeller says yes but not in that way.  
Or the “Are you dating?” That Beverly responds to with jokes and mild taunts.  
Sometimes the “Well have you ever?” To which they both laugh.  
This was usually followed by the “Would you ever?” To which they both say no.

There are still protestations and smug smiles that imply all they need to,  
The idea that this has to be a romance because only soulmates acted like that.  
It’s these people that get the biggest laughs from Beverly and Brian because they already know.  
Soulmates? Maybe. But what was to stop soulmates from being the friends that you found?

There are many things that happen in hallways. Some of which never happen again.

“So Hannibal’s at the hospital, too?” Beverly asks at the end of a conversation.  
She’s glowing and even though she always has it somehow feels wrong this time,  
As though she’s become a shooting star and Zeller could only watch as it burned him,  
As he can’t say one last “I love you.”

There are rumors that there are sometimes ghost in these hallways,  
Late at night searching for a loved one or lost body.  
Brian Zeller had never considered himself a believer,  
But as Beverly walked away he swore he could see her fading away.

Maybe she had never been there at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is a bit different from what I usually do but I liked it and I hope you guys do too !! as always feel free to comment/leave kudos because I love hearing from you guys. next upload will be in two week because I have to focus on education stuff rn :') so stay safe until then kids!!


	5. Chapter 5

There was no properly describing grief. One could start, discussing pits in stomachs or ragged breaths, but there would never be any truth to it. Because grief didn’t start in one moment or a collection of moments, there was no sudden aspect of it. Grief was there, oftentimes before anything bad at all happened, waiting for all defenses to be lowered. It was a fact of life, one that would follow humanity until its demise. It was humans who in their arrogance never noticed that grief had been looming in the corners of rooms and gaps of conversations. Not until it was too late.

“Did Beverly text you?” Zeller asked.

“No,” Price answered, his voice barely above a whisper.

At some point, SNL had been on in the background. There had been some meaningless debate over who was the strongest cast member. The night had been perfectly routine until the novelty started bleeding away. Until Brian started refreshing his phone hoping for something while Price pretended to ignore it all despite their shared fear.

Was fear the word for it anymore?

When you knew that something had gone wrong was it really fear?

And what did you call grief when it crept into the peripheries of daily life? When every single conversation was laced with a sense of bitterness and resignation. When friends commented on a hardened laugh or when siblings said they pitied you. When everything that could go wrong was happening all around you and you were powerless to stop it, just as you had been powerless your whole life, just as you would be until the day you died.

“How long have we known each other now?” Zeller asked, resting his phone face up on the table. It was too dark to see but his face was red.

It was too dark to see but Price knew.

“I don’t know,” Price started, trying to laugh, before giving up. His throat felt like sandpaper. “A good few years maybe.”

“God. I feel fucking old dude.”

“You think you feel old? Imagine how I feel.”

But the fact is they were both old by now. Their faces worn from late nights spent fighting of worry and eyes which had already seen the worst. They had seen the worst and so they had learned to share in grief. They had seen the worst and so they had begun to blur.

They had seen the worst so they both knew what was coming next.

Jimmy took a coin from his pocket, spinning it on the table. It fell with a small chime and Brian to Jimmy. It was routine.

“What was it?”

“What?”

“Heads or tails?”

“Oh,” Jimmy exhaled, “I didn’t look.”

“Yes, you did.” Brian insisted, almost falling into anger. He needed something to be angry at now. He needed to yell or look over every fact in his head until he could order every mistake but there was no point, was there? Even in the darkness, he could see a grim look on Price’s face.

“What’s the last thing you remember that made you feel this way, Jim?” Zeller asks after a while. After coins had been put back into pockets. After phones had remained silent.

“I don’t exactly want to be reminded of it,” Jimmy said. That was all that needed to be said after all. “But we cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and the idea that our eyes watered once.”

“I’m so fucking tired. I’m so fucking scared and tired.”

“So sleep.”

“And if I can’t do this anymore?” Zeller asked. He tried to hide that his voice was shaking. He wanted to. He needed to or he wouldn’t be able to handle what comes next.

“That's why I'm here.” Jimmy pauses. “If you need. It’s what you do when you care about people, even if they make fun of Star Trek.”

“Fuck off,” Zeller responds. He wants to smile but he can’t. Neither of them can.

“You wish. You’re stuck with me and you have absolutely no say.”

“Yeah. Probably why you’re not married.”

“Probably why you aren’t either.”

There is silence again. Resignation.

They are scared, more scared than they have been in their entire lives.

Things will never be okay again.

“Stay here tonight," Jimmy says. "We can ride together in the morning”

“What if something happens?”

“Then it happens to both of us." Jimmy had made up his mind. Brian trusts him. “I have every Monty Python movie on DVD.”

“You had me at Monty Python.”

Eventually, Brian falls asleep on the couch. Jimmy gets up softly and lays Beverly’s blanket on top of him. He paces a while. Then goes back to his couch.

The fear in the room is not gone when he closes his eyes but neither is the love.

As he falls asleep he hopes one last time that Beverly will be okay, not knowing he’s already too late.

* * *

  
Jack called Price and Zeller into his office exactly as it struck noon.

The two sat in chairs across from Jack, the world around them swaying even though they were still ashore. They could see that Jack’s eyes were red. They could see where this was going. They always could but it was never really about that. One could know exactly how the universe worked but there was never a way to control fate. One could fight and scream with every bone in their body, with something beyond the flesh, and still, every time they would lose.

“At approximately 9:00 a. m. this morning, I received a phone call from Freddie Lounds.”

That was what had happened, wasn’t it? Somebody fought too hard against fate. They had fought and in the end, things turned out just as they had been written because there was never any point in fighting. 

“Acting on an anonymous tip, she discovered a female body, immediately contacted my office. I was amongst the first on the scene.”

Zeller can’t remember the first time in his life that he chose anger. He had been angry as long as he could remember because things were easier that way. Everything was easier when you didn’t have to process pain. It was in the same way that Jimmy chose denial, the same way that he put out a false sense of positivity. These were the only weapons they had. 

“The victim has been identified as our colleague, Special Agent Beverly Katz.”

And they could both fire guns, it was part of the job, but what happened when they got struck? What happened when the world went black around Price or when the words rang in Zeller’s ears like an echo of every mistake he had ever made? What happened when they were in the middle of a conference room, surrounded by people who claimed to feel their pain but who never could? If they understood they would know that no amount of apologies could make up for those lost movie nights or inside jokes, for the language which had been created as just a thing for the three of them, for BeverlyBrianandJimmy.

Zeller convinces himself that they are heartless, that they have to be heartless. There’s no other reason why they wouldn’t even bother to get his and Jimmy’s names right.

Price has gone silent ever since the news.

Brian doesn’t comment.

“You should be allowed to grieve. You shouldn't have to wade through it.” Jack says.

They are looking over remains now. They are looking over remains and Brian is barely there at all. Instead, he’s thinking about every way his body could be cut open, every horrible way he could be torn apart instead. He could give up his organs, he thinks. He could give up his lungs, let them be torn apart by a pack of rabid dogs. He would give every part of himself, just for this to end. He would give all of his oxygen for Beverly, she had always taken his breath away, why just this once couldn’t he give it to her?

“We're not running away from this, Jack. Beverly wouldn't.” Jimmy says. It’s the first time that he’s spoken since the previous night, the first time he’s spoken since everything fell apart. 

A part of Brian finds himself hating Jimmy. It’s because he’s right. Beverly wouldn’t have run from anything. That was why she was fucking dead. That’s why her body was in front of them, so fucking empty when it was supposed to be filled with life and fire. Beverly wouldn’t give up because she was the best of them, of humanity.

Brian could live with being a bad person. He just wanted to go home.

“Good,” Jack responds after a moment, breaking up the silence.

“I double-checked the autopsy report. What you found in that observatory wasn't all Beverly.” Brian states, turning to look at Jack. He can hear the hoarseness in his voice, from crying or screaming. He can’t remember which it was. He can barely remember anything.

“What do you mean?”

“These kidneys, they were placed inside her body after she was killed. I typed them against DNA samples and they belong to the Mural Killer.”

“James Gray.” Zeller and Jack say at the same time.

“So whoever killed James Gray and sewed him into his mural also murdered Beverly, swapped out their kidneys.”

“Right now, the only thing we have to go on is we find her kidneys and we find her killer,” Brian states, as though he is swearing it to himself. On some level, he assumes he is.

It’s not Will Graham. It’s not Will Graham yet Brian finds himself angry at him because at the end of the day it is all Will Graham. Because without Will Graham, none of this would have happened; Beverly would have lived a full life, there wouldn’t be bodies all around them, Price wouldn’t be scared out of his goddamn mind. It’s not Will Graham but Brian finds himself still too full of hate to move without shaking.

His best friend is gone. 

His best friend is gone.

What is there to do but hate the person responsible? Because if he can’t hate them he has to hate himself, he has to hate Jimmy. If he can’t blame anyone else then he has to blame them because that’s why Beverly died. She couldn’t talk to them. They would never listen. They never had. They were the worst parts of humanity; all of the selfish resignation, all of the pride that was still hungry for more. It was their fault. It was their fault. They had let her go. She died and she died alone. All because of them.

As Price walks out of the lab that night Brian can hear him whispering, “I’m sorry,” in some half pathetic hope that she’ll hear. Brian would never admit it but he says it in his mind too. It’s all he can do.

* * *

  
“Do you ever think of yourself as being dead? Lying in a box with a lid on it?” Jimmy asks.

“No.” Brain responds.

“Neither do I, really” Jimmy lies, he pauses for a second. “It’s nuts to be depressed by it. I mean sure you think of it like being alive in a box, keep forgetting to consider that you’re dead and all. It should make a difference...shouldn’t it? I mean, you wouldn’t know you were in a box so it should just be like you were asleep in a box.

“Not that I’d like to sleep in a box, well, not without any air at least - you’d wake up for a start, and then where would you be? Besides inside the box obviously.”

Jimmy goes silent. For a second Brian worries that he’s dead.

“That’s the part I’m not very fond of, frankly. That’s why I don’t think of it…. I wouldn’t think about it if I were you.”

* * *

Halfway through the night, Brian comes to a realization.

Eternity is a terrible thought. One can never be sure where it’s going to end.

He feels sick.

* * *

“They don’t care about us,” Zeller says.

“What?” Jimmy asks, his voice barely above a whisper.

“They don’t care. We count for nothing. We could remain silent till we’re fucking green in the face they wouldn’t come. They don’t care.”

Price hums in agreement, it’s all he can do.

There’s no point in denying the truth.

“Remember that time she beat you at cards?”

“I always got annoyed at you for losing.” Brain chuckles dryly, his throat worn.

“Then she comes along and takes my place. She beats you her first time.”

“I know. It was fucking crazy.”

“I was just glad somebody could kick your ass. You needed it.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I did. I uh- I had no clue you remembered that.”

“I’m like that. Either I forget right away or I never forget.”

Brian and Jimmy are scared. They have just lost their best friend and they are scared. They don’t know if they are going to die. They decide to do it together if they must.

“I keep thinking she’ll come in any second now. Mix our names up. We can go back to watching bad movies and joking like we always did,” Jimmy confesses.

“Come on, dude. You know better than that. You can’t act death. She’s gone.”

They had been crying for some time that night. Neither knew when the pain would stop. Maybe it would never stop. Grief never fully disappeared, it was a fact of their job, it was a fact of life. They had known this for ages, it was a lesson crammed into every textbook, one that showed on faces of families daily. They had always adjusted, it was just what they did, but all was changed now.

“You shouldn’t sleep on the couch two nights in a row. I shouldn’t sleep on the couch two nights in a row. My back will be killing me.” Jimmy commented, getting up from the couch. “Take the guest bedroom. We’ll get your stuff tomorrow.”

“Jim, I can’t do that to you.”

“Just until the killer is caught. Then you can go back to your messy one-bedroom apartment way. Just do this for now. For you. For me.”

“Alright. On one condition: you let me buy groceries at the very least. I can’t be a burden.”

“Oh. Shut up. You’re an ass but you will never be a burden. That being said fine, but don’t go overboard.”

“Believe me. I won’t. I’m super fucking broke dude.” Brian jokes. As Price begins to leave he looks back, giving Brian a concerned look that asked if he was coming. Brian nodded to signal he would, he just needed a minute, and with that Jimmy went to bed.

Brian would never admit it but he took Beverly’s blanket to his room that night, holding it close as though she was still there, doing that half-snort half-laugh thing that she always did. As he begins to fall asleep he whispers that he loves her one last time because none of the others had counted before, they had never meant this.

As Brian sleeps he dreams that he is walking down the halls of the FBI again. There are footsteps behind him, he can hear in their weight that they are combat boots, that they’re Beverly’s combat boots. He turns around to look at her, but as he turns she is already gone.

In a dream, he reaches out for her. Hoping that this one time she would come back.

She never will.  
She never will.  
She never will.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if i posted this super late no I didn't because yes I did because no I didn't


	6. Chapter 6

Jimmy doesn't know what he expects when Jack calls him aside at the end of the day.

His first instinct is to look over at Brian, mostly to check for any guilt that would signal he was going to let Jimmy take the fall for something stupid. After realizing that he looks completely innocent for once in his life, Jimmy decides to run through all possible mishaps that may have warranted a meeting. He knew that they had double-checked their data, he always made sure of that much. All evidence gathered was properly put away. He ran through this mental list until he realized that Jack just wanted to talk, much to Brian’s amusement.

“Dude, haven’t you been his friend for years?” Brian joked as he walked with Jimmy down the hallways, their strides perfectly matched as they always were.

“Maybe I would be less suspicious if you weren’t always blaming things on me.”

“Okay, you did it to me for my first two years so consider it payback. Also, don’t hate the player, hate the game.”

“You’re a filthy liar.”

“I’m a very clean liar actually.”

“Z, you can go,” Jack said as the two walked in the door, causing them both to stop dead in their tracks.

“Oh?”

“What did you do?” Jimmy asked, elbowing Brian who swatted his arm away.

“Wow. Real mature.”

“You started it.”

“What? You literally just started it.”

“I’m not doing this with you here.”

“Right. Of course. Wait until we’re home, huh?”

Jack cleared his throat causing Zeller and Price to break from their overdramatized argument. The look on his face read somewhere between exhaustion and misery, which was common at this point. Then again, it couldn’t exactly get much worse than the apeshit things that both Will and Hannibal would say on actual legitimate crime scenes.

“Z?”

“Right. Operation Zeller fucks his way out of trouble”

“Operation what?” Jimmy asks, for the first time wondering if this job would kill him.

“He’s exaggerating.” Jack sighs, burying his face in his hands.

“Jack wants me to wine and dine Freddie Lounds for something,” Zeller adds far too casually.

“Wasn’t she completely uninterested in you?”

“Yeah, well, I mean you didn’t have to say it like that.”

“Oh, I didn’t know you were-”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry. Should I say something?”

“Let’s just drop it.”

“Drop it. Right. Cool.”

An uncomfortable silence hangs in the air, Jack not yet having removed his face from his hands. Zeller and Price, for the most part, stood completely still, waiting to see what Jack would do. Or they did until Zeller remembered what he was supposed to be doing.

“Um. Freddie agreed to meet with me in 20 so I’ll leave you guys to it. Uh….Have fun?”

Zeller slipped out of the room, making a small crashing sound on his way out that caused Jack to exhale. Even if he would never admit it out loud, Jimmy knew that he on some level appreciated Brian’s antics because everyone did. Being FBI wasn’t exactly the easiest job and even if Brian walked the line of annoying and inappropriate pretty much constantly, there was some need for life among all of the death. Sometimes that life just happened to come packaged in jokes that would make a middle-class family of four go cold over dinner. Literally. It had happened.

“That man would be hopeless if his head wasn’t attached to his body,” Jack starts, shaking his head. 

“I’m afraid he does just as much damage with it on,” Jimmy replied, taking a seat across from Jack. 

“You’re probably right about that one, Jimmy,” Jack chuckles, taking his face from his hands. He’s smiling. It’s nice given that there hadn’t been many smiles as of late. It wasn’t exactly easy to find joy when you were fearing for your lives, after all. “Bella sends her regards.”

“Is she doing better?” Jimmy asked, genuinely concerned.

“She’s pulling through.”

“Good.”

There was a look that came across Jack’s face whenever he brought up Bella, a subtle one, but the corners of his eyes crinkled slightly and the deep concentration in his face seemed to relax. He loved her as much as anybody could love another human being. It was one of those loves that people wrote stories about, one of those loves that was reflected in works of art across the globe. It made everyone better because wherever Jack went he carried that love and people wanted to emulate it. Jack and Bella were soulmates if such a thing existed and anyone would be lucky to have a love like theirs.

These were just the start of the observations that Jimmy had made throughout the years.

“Do you two still do your scrabble nights?”

“We try our best. It can be hard sometimes,” Jack answered.

“You try. That’s more than most.”

“She’s strong. She inspires me to be better. I hope I can do the same for her.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“You should come over sometime. We’re always more than happy to have you.”

“Well, I will never turn down an evening with the Crawfords. “

For the first time in a long time, it felt like Jack and Jimmy just sitting together as friends. Sure, they were friends that had met through some of the worst circumstances imaginable, but they were friends no less. They had spent too much time at trivia nights and New Year’s parties to ever not be friends. It went without saying that the two had the most hilarious dirt on each other too.

Dirt that would never be revealed, of course.

“As much as I would love to talk about Bella all night, that’s not why I brought you in.”

“Is everything alright?”

“Jimmy Price, how could you forget to remind me that your Birthday is coming up?”

Oh yeah.

“I was just waiting to see when anyone would notice. I definitely didn’t forget.”

“You mean the same way you didn’t forget it was New Years?”

  
“Excuse you. I had every reason to believe it was still late November.”

“Lucky that Beverly predicted that one,” Jack joked, causing silence to fall over the room.

This was the first time that anyone had said her name since that day. A part of Jimmy is happy that Brian isn’t here, even now Jimmy could never really predict how he would react. Not that Jimmy was doing much better exactly. He was just quieter in his response, he always had been. To most people that would seem healthier but deep down, everyone knew it wasn’t at all. That’s why a part of Jimmy also wishes Brian were here too because at least then someone would be honest enough to call him on his shit. If they were going to hurt at least it wouldn’t feel so isolating.

“This job ages you, Jimmy. Have you ever thought of retiring?”

“What?”

As a matter of fact, it had crossed Jimmy’s mind to retire. The thought always came back during those late nights, the ones that were spent thinking of every possible way that things had gone wrong. He had caught himself thinking about it every day since Beverly. In lulls of conversations or during Hot Fuzz rewatches with Brian. He had thought about other things too—moving or finding something new. These were the things that he would never say out loud, never with people at least. That made it all too real.

“I’m not suggesting before we solve her case, Price. That decision is only yours to make,” Jack pauses, “I think it’s just something to consider for after.”

“I’m not retiring anytime soon, Jack,” Jimmy starts, “Also. I’m literally a month older than you.”

“I just don’t want you to get dragged into-”

“It’s my choice. I’m not going to run away.”

“You barely spoke for two days.”

“And it passed,” Jimmy argued. Even if Jack was right, even if Jimmy had thought about it deep down, he couldn’t retire now. “I’m in it for the long haul. Brian too.”

“Brian could get a teaching job.”

“Are you seriously suggesting that you would let our Brian Zeller teach?”

“It would be a good exercise in patience. He has the people skills”

“Patience is a virtue I doubt he will ever learn,” Jimmy paused. “And if you offered him a position right now do you think he would say yes?”

“No.”

“Exactly.”

Jack went quiet for a while and Jimmy did too. They both knew this conversation had to happen eventually. This conversation was probably for the better, even. They could all make their way out after they caught The Ripper. They could go back to leading their normal lives with their normal scrabble nights. Jack and Bella could go to Italy. Brian could focus on his personal life.

Jimmy could be anywhere but here.

“The two of you are incredibly stubborn, you know?”

“So we’ve been told. You talked about this with Bri already?”

“No. Not that he gave me the chance. He made it pretty clear that he wasn’t going away anytime soon when I brought him in to discuss Freddie Lounds.”

“What’s that about anyway?” Jimmy asked. “Last I heard we weren’t even able to say her name without him getting into a mood.”

“It’s about something that will get us exactly where we need to be,” Jack stated. His mind was off somewhere. Jimmy couldn’t quite tell where. “I don’t want you discussing it outside of this room.”

“I could talk about it with him though, right?”

“Could I really stop you from doing that?” Jack asked, to which Price would answer probably not any other time. “How long have you two been living together?”

“How long have we what? Where did you...?”

“You two were arguing about refrigerator storage while collecting evidence today.” That sounded about right. “Neither of you have ever been the most subtle.”

“Just since Beverly,” Price admitted, not even bothering to dignify Jack’s jokes. “It’s safer. Easier too I guess. I mean, if we die we don’t die completely alone, you know?”

“So this is a death thing?”

“I prefer a survival thing.” But yes. It was a death thing. When held up to scrutiny that’s what it was, that and fear. A fear of dying, a fear of being alone, a fear of things being torn up more than they already were. “He acts a big game, but he feels awful, Jack. I know if I died he wouldn’t be great.”

“And you?”

“If he died? Probably be the same if not worse.”

“You two are too similar for comfort, you know? You blur together.” Jack says, nodding gently. “But I’m glad you can at least have each other.”

“Me too.”

A minute passes and for a second Jimmy is hit with the reality of their situation. The fact that one of them could end up dead, leaving the other behind with no clue of what to do next. The fact of blood in life; blood as an inevitable force that made everybody equal because there was only ever blood. The fact that they might possibly not escape this case with their lives, that Brian’s sisters would lose a brother, that Jimmy would come to be almost nobody. They could die having never gotten Beverly the justice that she deserved.

They had to make it. Just until this case was over at least.

“Alright. I don’t want to hold you back too much. Get some food. Rest. I expect you to be at the top of your game tomorrow.”

“I’m always at the top of my game. It’s why I’m the first one you call.”

“Tragically our best Forensics guy also happens to be the man who gives me the most grief.”

“You know you love me.”

“Define love.”

“The fact that you agreed to get a tragic, albeit beautiful, matching tattoo with me.”

“Beautiful would not be how I best describe it,” Jack starts, shaking his head with a smile. That had been an interesting night. The result of sleep deprivation, stress, a little too much alcohol, and bad takeout. Jimmy had always been the best bad influence, much to his friends' dismay, but especially to Jack’s dismay. They had made their own noteworthy list of stupid decisions and more than slightly risky things done throughout their friendship. It always seemed better in the moment than in retrospect, especially given the image that Jack had to maintain, but even so, Jimmy could tell Jack looked back on these memories happily, if with a bit of embarrassment. 

“Bella is still upset at me for that one thanks to you.”

“I don’t know what you mean. I’m an angel. And so so old. I should just retire, right?”

“Do I need to kick you out of my office Jimmy Price?”

“I’m leaving! I’m leaving!”

As Jimmy gets up to exit Jack follows behind him, turning the lights in the office off as he leaves. He realizes that the hallways of the FBI have felt much more like a ghost town since Beverly died. Most days he couldn’t even tell which hallway went in which direction.

“Oh, and Jimmy? If you’re not doing anything for your Birthday have dinner with us. I love you. Bella loves you. You’re family. And you can bring Z along too if you must.”

“I’ll hold you to that when you sigh at the sight of his face.”

They exited with the smiles still on their faces for the first time in what felt like years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i noticed i did not write notes here so hi!! i hope you're all doing well <3 thank you all for always commenting/leaving feedback it means the world. this chapter is for jack and jimmy because we were robbed of more of their friendship and i think that i simply unacceptable!! anyways thank you all so much for your support we're almost halways there y'all!! stay safe :)


	7. Chapter 7

Brian wasn’t exactly looking forward to meeting with Freddie.

Scratch that. He wasn’t looking forward to meeting with Freddie at all. It wasn’t exactly fun being sent on a mission to play the person who had played you, especially when the details of how you had been played were made available to your boss. 

Yeah, Brian had gotten in a fair amount of trouble that day.

It wasn’t that he said anything untrue, well, he hadn’t said anything wholly untrue at least. Was it wrong of him to call Will an unstable con artist on par with boardwalk psychics that had an ego the size of Jupiter? Probably. It wasn’t a lie that Will was unstable though. No amount of corpse improv made up for the fact that the guy wasn’t exactly healthy, even by FBI standards. He was asocial, arrogant, hostile, generally punchable. Adding that to the murder empathy and that time when he really fucked up a crime scene? It wasn’t the greatest look, to say the least.

Then there were the murders, or there were the murders. Will’s name had been cleared, but that would never be enough, would it? Because even if he hadn’t killed all of those people, even if everything continued to point away from him, none of this would have happened without him. In some way it was all still his fault, it would always be his fault. The only question left was to what extent? To what extent was Will involved? To what extent was he guilty?

Then you got Hannibal involved.

“Sitting alone on a Friday night? God, you’re pathetic.”

Brain groaned at the sound of a seat pulling up next to him. It seemed like he saw far too much of Freddie Lounds these days. In the breaking into crime scenes way, of course. She had made it all too clear that she had no interest in him. At the very least Brian knew never to make the same mistake twice.

“You’re late.”

“You’re lucky I’m meeting you at all.”

“Am I? Am I really?” Brian asked, turning his attention away from his drink and towards her.

No wires. Or at least it didn’t look like there were any wires.

Not that you could tell with Freddie Lounds.

“You are. Trust me on this one,” Freddie replied, only offering a fake smile. It seemed that no fake sympathy was being offered tonight. Probably for the better. “I turned down an interview for this so it better be worth my time.”

“Right. My mistake. I don’t want to end up on your Tumblr shitlist,” Brain mumbled, turning away from her again. “I’m here because Jack wants to see you.”

“Tell him if he has any legal complaints he should-”

“Not about that. Believe it or not, I’m good at my job. He wouldn’t waste me on something as small as a legal dispute with a tabloid reporter.”

“You do realize that every time you bring me down you’re bringing yourself down too, right?”

“I’m not here to argue with you, Freddie,” Brian sighs, still trying to avoid her gaze, not that it works. “I think that you’re crazy smart. I mean you have done more to piss off the ripper than any of us and you’re here mostly unscathed. You’re probably more ambitious than any of us. I mean you’re a total ass, but I guess on some level you have to be to get your way.”

“Jesus.”

“I’m just saying. You might be the craziest bastard in this investigation. And that’s why I’m here right now; because on some level, I have faith in you and whatever absurd plan Jack has thought out. I need to.”

“I’m sorry,” Freddie says. For the first time, her voice is completely stripped of its sarcasm. She is sorry and Brian knows exactly what it’s about.

“I need this solved for her at least. I know I won’t be the one to do it so I just need someone.”

“I wanted to reach out to you sooner actually but-”

“Your number was blocked? Yeah, uh she made me do that,” Brain laughed, finally feeling like it was okay to look at Freddie. “She told me it was the only way I was moving on.”

“She was probably right about that one.”

“God. She was right about everything. She always had this bright laugh too that was mixed with a snort. She blasted her music in the car so loud it left my head hurting. She didn’t take shit from anybody. The first time I met her I was just so amazed by her. I knew she would be important to me from the very first day. You would have loved her if you had gotten the time to meet her.”

“She meant a lot to you.”

“She meant a lot to everyone that she interacted with. She always did the right thing. It makes me angry that she died doing the right thing.”

“You couldn’t have changed it,” Freddie insists like he doesn’t already know.

Like every scenario hasn’t been in his head on repeat since that day.

“She couldn’t trust me or Price. She died alone because she couldn’t trust us. Maybe I couldn’t have stopped her killer but at least she wouldn’t have died so alone.”

By this point, Brian can tell that Freddie’s scanning his face. He doesn’t care. As long as she isn’t recording. This isn’t hers to share. Nothing about Beverly was hers to share. She did it anyway though, didn’t she? Everybody knew. Everybody saw those pictures. Because Freddie had never cared about privacy, she cared about a paycheck. At the end of the day, her career came first, that was all.

“Why did you publish those pictures, Freddie?”

Now it’s Brain’s turn to scan her face. Search for any sign of remorse because he at least needed to know she felt bad. If not for Beverly then for getting caught. He just needed some sense that she was human. Even if it was faked. That was okay for now.

“I don’t know.”

It’s the truth.

“I’ve been so angry at you. I’ve been angry at Will. I’ve been angry at Jack. I’ve been angry at Hannibal. I’ve been angry at Jim for fucks sake.”

“But mostly at yourself, right?”

“Yeah, well. You take a guess about that one.” Brian scoffs, taking another sip of his drink.

The pair go silent for a moment. Brian trying to get his mind to stop racing through every theory and unchecked feeling. Freddie looked like she was searching for something to say, something to make this all better even though nothing could. It was all too fucked up now. That was the only reason they would be meeting again. That was the only reason that Freddie had no wires on and Brian’s location services were off. Things were fucked up, and so this was the meeting ground for the two people that had fucked up the most.

“Do you know why I chose you?”

“Because Jimmy is gay and Beverly would see right through you?”

“I mean, you’re not entirely wrong. It was also because I could tell how sensitive you were, though.”

“Oh. We’re back to this again? Great.”

“I could see that you were emotional, impulsive. You were a bit egotistical too. Clearly into me. It all made my job very easy. I knew I could use you in any way I wanted basically.”

“Well, I’m not into you anymore if that makes you feel better.”

“Maybe not. Your posture _has_ changed." Freddie pauses, thinking to herself for a second. “You think I’m a dirty liar. You think I’m cruel. I haven’t given you anything to challenge that perspective of me.”

“You’re certainly not now if that’s what you’re trying to do.”

“I’m trying to tell you I don’t think you’re really angry. Not with anyone but yourself at least. I know angry men. Will Graham is an angry man. You’re not. You just care too much about things. Death and guilt? They’ll hurt anyone, but you need to be angry or you wouldn’t know how to live with yourself.”

“Being emotional isn’t exactly fit for the job, is it?”

“A lot of people would argue no. You’re very easy to manipulate, you’re extremely obvious, you can be immature. You’re also dedicated. When you love someone you would go through hell for them. You’re also smart despite your obliviousness at times. If you can find a way to put that love into every case without getting eaten alive anyone would be lucky to have you. Beverly is in good hands because of you. She’d be happy because she would know you’ll catch her killer.”

“I think that might be the first nice thing you’ve ever said to me,” Brian joked, a weak half-smile starting to grow on his face. “I think I might be rubbing off on you.”

“No. I can assure you you’re not. Nice try though.”

“Holy shit. I broke Freddie Lounds!”

“I will upload our entire conversation onto Tattlecrime.”

“Worst that can happen is I end up dead.”

“Probably a great happiness to women.”

“It’s depressing to think that’s the truth.”

The two sat together in silence for a moment. They weren’t sitting as enemies or an ex-fling, not anymore. They were sitting as something close to friends now. Maybe they would never fully be friends. Brian was still pissed at Freddie for the Beverly thing. Freddie still probably found Brian pathetic. Still, this was nice in its own way.

“Are you okay though?” Freddie asks after a moment.

“No. I’m having these awful nightmares that I’m turning into a bug,” Brian responds, jokingly. Freddie laughs.

“Didn't take you for a Kafka fan. No offense.”

“None taken. Who the fuck is Kafka? I’m talking about The Simpsons comic.”

“Of course you are.”

Brian looks confused and Freddie shakes her head, which Brian figures is her way of saying let’s drop it.

“Are _you_ okay? I feel like you see more than half of what I do and have like no support.”

“I still feel like I’m pumping air to Chilton sometimes but besides that? I’m fine.”

“You mean it isn’t normal to imagine Chilton close to death?” Brian jokes, raising his eyebrows to challenge Freddie.

“You know that’s not what I mean at all.”

“Are you sure?”

“No, but I’m also working with Jack soon so I should keep that to myself.”

“He hears worse from Jim and me on the daily. Even worse from Will and Hannibal. Then again, they’re his favorite freaks so,” Brian starts. He takes a sip from his drink. “I wouldn’t be shocked if they were in this together.

“Hannibal does seem to have a particular fondness for Will, doesn’t he?”

“It feels like when Jim and I are riffing off each other almost, just more murderous. Like they have their own language, their own time. It’s like they know each other inside and out. Scariest shit I've seen by far." 

Brian pauses and looks at Beverly, meeting her eyes. He has a creeping suspicion about why Jack had sent him to meet Freddie, he's just missing the thing that makes it all connect.

“They almost seem to know each other intimately.”

“Almost like murder best friends."

"Or Murder Husbands."

"What?"

"That's a good title, actually. Ashamed I didn’t come up with it sooner.”

"Okay. Feel like I’m missing something.”

Freddie shoots Brian a purely dumbfounded look. Brian, who isn't quite sure of what he did to warrant such a look can only stare back in confusion.

"What?" Brian asks after getting too uncomfortable with the staring.

"Nothing."

"Yep. Definitely missing something."

"I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Freddie lies “You didn’t miss a thing.”

Brian decides to just shrug it aside and finishes his drink. It's getting late. Price is probably getting worried. He should go home.

"Uhm…. You should come over to dinner. Tonight. Sometime soon."

"I have a girlfriend," Freddie stated firmly.

"Wait really? Oh, that's so cool! You could invite her too. I have no problem cooking for four. I mean Jim sort of hates you so it may take some time for him to warm up to you guys but he wouldn't mind, not really at least. We have trivial pursuit."

"Oh."

"Oh. You thought I meant? No. You were right about the whole me moving on thing. No offense. I mean clearly, you're not offended, and also you're an autonomous human being and my personal opinion doesn't matter at all. Anyways," Brian started getting up. There was a panicked look on his face. Freddie almost felt bad. "Not trying to get with you. Just it's late. I didn't know if you had food. I don't want Price to worry that I'm dead."

"No. I get it. Thank you for the invite. I mean she doesn't like to eat in new places so I have to pass, but that's sweet almost."

"Thank god. I actually planned meals this week and there really wasn't enough food for 4." Brian sighs in relief. The look of panic that had flashed across his face moments before fading. "In that case tell her I said hi. I bet she's cool. I'll see you around, I guess? Have fun with Jack."

"Stay safe."

"You too," Brian replied, his voice firm.

As Brian left a stage was set, and for the first time, he knew what it was for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TWO CHAPTERS IN A WEEK AAA!!! No, but for real? It's crazy to think that I'm a little halfway over this fic. I've spent a lot of time working on it and I hope you all can take something away from it too. It's crazy that after this we only have 6 ish chapters to go! The fic will be wrapping up around New Years' Eve/New Years' day so as we head into these last few weeks I want to say thank you all for your support and reading. I hope you all enjoy the rest of this little journey.


	8. Chapter 8

A curtain rises.

Zeller and Price are onstage. They are cast in a play, each man playing himself, but they are cast with purpose Jack assures. It is in the peripheries that a play begins to fall apart, and so it is their job to stay on track. They are never to squirm at a lie, never to smirk a second out of time. One wrong move and everything falls apart.

“All beasts of burden are sacred animals,” Hannibal says, starting the play.

“This kind of mutilation usually presents as cult activity.”

Jimmy is almost positive Jack got the wrong people for the job.

“When an animal is sacrificed, it's presumed the power of the beast will be psychically transported to whoever's offering up the goods,” Jimmy adds, just as he normally would.

“Which is why sacrificial animals should be healthy, without any defects,” Hannibal starts, only to pause for a second to observe something further.

Jimmy can’t breathe.

“This horse was sick.”

Oh. Thank god.

“The womb's more or less intact,” Brian says. His voice had always been the more stable of the two, mostly because he never shut up or passed by a snide comment, but in situations like this, it was a reminder of stability. There hadn’t been many reminders of that recently. “The victim was deceased before she was enwombed. The ecchymosis of the subcutaneous tissue is consistent with-”

“She was strangled,” Jimmy clarifies, cutting Brian off, but also leaning in to say, “A bit wordy don't you think?”

“Yeah.”

Some people needed reassurance to get through tough times, but any needed reassurance could come later. Now was about not getting murdered, even if that meant Jimmy was left to say ‘For fucks sake, Bri,’ in his own way.

“She was scrappy.” Brain pauses. Jimmy takes a picture. It is all in perfect time. “She put up a fight, Jack.”

“The horse is a chrysalis. A cocoon meant to hold the young woman until her death could be transformed,” Hannibal states with a sureness that was terrifying on a regular basis, but now?

“Transformed into what?” Jack asks, but they all know the answer by now.

“Life.”

There is a blackout then a change of scene.

* * *

  
When the curtain rises again, Zeller and Price are outside.

The two of them look over the crime scene, as they always do. There's the light coating of snow on the ground, disrupted every six or so feet by dug up graves. Other agents scrambled around the scene, collecting whatever samples they could find, never seeming to notice how much they became the background. As Zeller and Price walked they wondered if they too were blending into the background, no longer playing important roles in their own life. They were alive, living and breathing, but it wasn't quite for their own story. Nothing had been for their own story since Will.

Maybe that was why nobody was quite ready for him to be back.

Jack had briefed them on the situation that morning. It was before Will had become a reality of their lives again before he had caused all of that unprocessed anger and grief to resurface. He didn't mean it, the guilt in his every step made that clear, but he had already been found guilty by Zeller and Price without knowing. If he wasn't guilty then why was there this much hurt? Why were the first ten minutes after his arrival spent by Zeller trying to get Price out of his own head? Why, after seeing his face, did Zeller imagine every corpse with Beverly's face as though she had just been killed in front of him?

"I'm going to apologize to him," Zeller says when the initial shock fades when he is finally thinking straight once again. 

"You're what?"

"I'm going to apologize to him."

"Oh."

Zeller looks at Price concerned, trying to find a response in his eyes or silence, but there is none. Price doesn't know what to do, on some level neither of them do, which is why they refuse to break away for a second. Either they both make up their minds, or neither of them do, but this was never a game where one was sure without the other.

"I have to stay with my bodies. I found fecal matter on one, we may need to get a sample." Price decides, shifting his weight away from Zeller. It's his tell. 

He feels guilty.

"You want me to tell him you're included in my apology or?"

"Isn't it a detective's job to infer?"

"He's not technically-"

"Include me in the apology."

"Thank you," Zeller starts, smiling as much as he can given their situation. "Anyways, what is it with you and stool samples?"

"You act like you weren't part of the Will Graham stool sample train."

"Okay. You know what? We're not having the conversation right now. At home."

"All you ever want to do at home is talk about work. It's boring. This is why you never do well at trivia."

"I never do well at trivia because you memorized the entire encyclopedia and I was busy actually having a love life in college," Zeller corrects, standing in his place for a second to look at Will, who was only feet away now. "Here goes nothing."

When Zeller leaves Price's side, the world manages to shift yet again. It's darker almost, the dark of the sky seeming to seep into bodies and branches on trees. His face feels almost pained, the sudden sharpness of the wind cutting into his nose and eyes. Each step towards Will enhances the darkness, but even scarier is the feelings that come with it: the anger, the remorse, the sadness. It was as though every emotion in the world had been magnified for this moment.

"Will…. I owe you an apology."

As Zeller speaks, Will turns to face him. They haven't seen each other since that day. Will looks more tired somehow, his eyes sunken into his face a bit. There's anger there too, an anger that could only possibly come from having never been listened to. Zeller can't imagine that he looks nearly as bad, he hadn't gone through half of what Will did, and he hopes he never needs to.

But this wasn't a game of comparing grief.

"You don't owe me anything," Will replies. His voice had become harsher too since they last saw each other, or maybe it had just become colder. Maybe they had all aged a bit too much.

"I thought you were a killer," Zeller states, almost desperately. This had been his fault, hadn't it? It hadn't been Will's guilt that he was feeling at all, it was his own. He had done this, so now he needed to apologize, even if he never stopped. He just needed to get this one thing right. He needed to fix as much as he could. He needed control. He needed control over this one thing. "I didn't want to hear anything else. So, I wouldn't consider anything else."

"The evidence was compelling," Will laughs. The evidence had been compelling, but that wasn't the end of it really. Zeller had never seen anything because he had been angry and jealous. Zeller had never seen anything because he was prideful, and Will had been behind bars for it. It was all because he refused to believe. 

That was why Beverly was gone too, wasn't it? That selfish refusal to listen because your place at the top was back, even if it had all been wrong. The only parties left to be blamed were Zeller and Price who now stood apart but remained as one unit always. They were a trio cut down to two, all out of their own pride. Now Zeller just wanted to make it up in any way he could, if not because it was right, then for the best of them.

"That didn't stop Beverly from questioning it. Maybe if she thought we would've listened, she would have come to us. She didn't."

Zeller is about to break. As he looks into Will's eyes he can see for the first time that Will is on their team too. He had loved Beverly, maybe not as Zeller did, maybe not even as Price did, but that never made love any less real. They had loved her in their own ways, in ways that maybe they would never fully understand, but they didn't need to now. She was gone. They both took the blame for that. 

And there is pain there. Brian Zeller holds out a hand. Will shakes it.

Another blackout. Another change of scene.

* * *

“Orthodontics confirmed. It's Freddie Lounds,” Zeller says, looking over a body that now existed as Freddie Lounds. “A little bit of kerosene, fwoomp! Incendiary journalism.”

“See?” Price takes the lead of the scene, pointing towards the corpse of Freddie Lounds. “No scabrous crust on her chin. She was dead before the match was struck.”

She was dead before the match was struck. She had been as good as dead since her first article on the ripper. In coming back to the case she had signed her life away, whether it was to her own selfish ambitions or something else entirely. Perhaps it was a fitting death in that way, she had gone out in flames, just as she had wanted.

“Blood's already pooled to the lowest parts of her body,” Zeller adds, looking towards Will to pace the scene. “She’s been dead at least 24 hours.”

“Freddie had a longing to be noticed. She was noticed.” Will says, his eyes glued on Freddie’s corpse as though this was life or death.

Then again, it was life or death for them, wasn’t it?

“Freddie Lounds's ultimate failing was her inability to keep herself out of her own stories,” Jack states.

“Freddie had the longing need to be noticed,” Will continues, taking the torch that Jack had passed off. “She was noticed.  
Will looked to Hannibal who was already leaning in to inspect the body. There was a collective silence that overcame the room as he lingered over the body, inspecting the bits of charred flesh and teeth that were displayed in front of him. Jack had described it as an offering, saying the body would need to be perfect even under the scrutiny of a God, so Zeller and Price had listened.

This may have been their finest work yet.

“Severely-burned bodies tend to split along lines of musculature.” As he spoke, Hannibal pointed to a jagged opening along the corpse’s back. “But this looks like an incision.”

“Cut out her psoas muscles. Looks like he used a hunting knife,” Zeller clarified.

“A peculiar trophy.”

With this Hannibal shot a glance at Will who averted his eyes. It wasn’t only the body that had been an offering after all. It was the meat that carried the true weight of the killings. There was very little that was more vulnerable than food, than sharing your killings with another. Hannibal was privy to this fact just as the team was privy to his appetite. Now it was a game of strategy, and Will was the winning piece. The only question that remained: What team was Will playing for?

When the moment had been felt, Jack took control of the scene again. “Why did he burn her?”

“How many people has Freddie Lounds burned in her career?” Zeller reasoned, looking towards Will.

At least they had that much in common.

“Whoever did this was not striking out against Miss Lounds’ exploitative brand of journalism.” As Hannibal speaks, his words begin to slow, ultimately leading him to pause for just a second. One quick thought then it was solved. “This is something else. This is something sacred.”

Will considered the corpse in front of him, making Hannibal’s words the backdrop to his own thoughts. There was a distance there, one that was enough to make Zeller worry that Hannibal had found out. Then.

“Freddie Lounds had to burn. She was fuel. Fire destroys, creates. It's mythical,” Will stated with the firmness of a killer, giving such a convincing performance that it didn’t seem to be a performance at all. “She won't rise from the ashes, but her killer will.”

“He’s the one to be noticed now,” Hannibal continued.

At some point, it felt as though the two had begun to blur, and Zeller and Price couldn’t tell who was on what team.

The curtain closed. An act was over.

* * *

  
But it was those stories that happened in the background that truly made a play, those smallest moments that managed to capture life. It was Jimmy and Brian who were usually left in charge of driving the plots in the background. 

They were also sorta the best at it.

There's the day when Brian slides Jimmy a plain envelope in the lab without a word. It was one of those things that was seemingly innocuous, but when paired with Brian's smug grin it didn't seem innocuous at all. As a matter of fact, to Jimmy, that smirk read explicitly of something that would either get the two in trouble, put them in the way of danger, or both.

"What is this?" Jimmy asks, waving the envelope around as soon as it is only the two of them in the lab.

"Don't know," Brian shrugs, grinning as he walks towards the door. "Guess you'll just have to open it."

"You know, I don't condone murder, but some days you really make me understand what might bring someone would do it!" Jimmy calls out as Brian leaves the room.

"It's a birthday gift dumbass! Part two is in your room by the way. You're welcome." Brian yells back before walking down the hallway

It's a bit dramatic given they have to drive home together, but whatever.

When a few seconds pass, once it has been long enough for Brian to be down the hallway, Jimmy holds the envelope out in front of him. Then it hit that it actually was his birthday and this wasn't just one of Brian's jokes, at least not entirely. Jimmy opened the envelope then did a double-take when he saw the contents. It wasn't a card, or money, but something that only Brian would think of doing.  
Inside the envelope was a ticket for Saturday Night Live. It was an actual ticket to see the actual finale of a season of SNL It was something that Jimmy had always wanted to see, something that he had talked about maybe twice, and yet Brian hadn't just remembered it, he was actually going to make it happen. 

This, of course, raised the question:

_How on Earth?_

When Jimmy met Brian at the car they didn't speak of the ticket, but the energy could be felt in the ride home. Jimmy was happy, and Brian was happy that Jimmy was happy. For a while it all felt like before any of this had started; before Will and Hannibal entered the picture; before their lives became what they were now. It was nice, and maybe Jimmy was indulging in the feeling a little bit too much, but it was his birthday and he had that right.

Judging by how Brian turned up the radio just as he thought this, he figured that Brian agreed.

_Is he really going to go the whole car ride without mentioning the ticke-_

"So what did you think of part one of your gift?" Brian asked, leaving the car hanging in silence for a second as Jimmy just looked at him shocked.

_No. Really. How on earth did he manage to pull this off?_

"What did you do to get this?" Jimmy asks, just after the words come into his brain. 

"Wow. Okay. You're welcome, I guess."

"I thought the thanks was implied, just so you know," Jimmy replied, not even dignifying Brian's clearly fake anger with a response. "I just don't know how you pulled this off."

"Blackmail," Brian said, not phased by this at all. "Lots and lots of college blackmail."

"And since when are you hanging out with professional comedians?"

"Eh. I have a good story or eighty from college that you will never know."

"Oh really? Such as?"

"It's your birthday, you get special treatment," Brian started as he pulled the car into the driveway on the side of Jimmy's house. "But you are absolutely not getting a college story out of me today or anytime in the near future."

"Given how much I already know about you? If you're hiding something I should be terrified."

Brian parked the car and pulled the keys out of the ignition. Then, as he was getting out of the car, he looked at Jimmy and nodded. "That's a pretty reasonable response."

"That's not a good thing!" Jimmy argued as he followed Brian up the steps of the porch and to the door. He watched as Brian dug around in his pockets to look for the keys for about a minute before giving losing hope. When Brian finally realized it was hopeless, he turned around to give a look at Jimmy who sighed and got his keys out of his pocket.

"I don't get how you have managed to live this long," Jimmy admitted as he opened the door.

"Okay, in my defense-"

"There is no in your defense this is the second time in the span of two weeks."

"Third, actually," Brian corrected as he walked inside. As Jimmy came in Brian made sure that he had actually locked the door behind the two of them. It was funny how he could remember to always check the locks but never remember the thing that he needed to actually open them. "You know I'm always down to argue over technicalities, but you still haven't seen part two of your super amazing birthday gift and I actually put a lot of hard work into it so…"

"You know you didn't have to do this for me, right?" Jimmy asked, his chest feeling somewhat tight. Brian only stared in confusion which managed to make it even worse. "I don't want you to feel obligated, or guilty, or pitiful."

"Jim, if I found you pitiful I wouldn't be using my good SNL contacts on you. Wild concept, I know, but have you considered people actually care about you and you aren't a burden? People enjoy having you around. They want you to have good things. Now can you please go upstairs and look at part two of your gift before I have to kill you myself?"

Jimmy thought over the words, reasoning what Brian had just said in his head. It all made logical sense, that wasn't the issue. The issue was Jimmy still felt inclined not to believe it. Then again, Brian wouldn't be saying it if it wasn't true. He wasn't the lying to spare feelings type. It was one of the better things about having him around.

"If you spent an outrageous amount of money on this we're returning it," Jimmy said as he walked up the staircase to his room, pausing at the halfway mark, only to walk back down and look at Brian again. "Also you are so telling me about your SNL contact. Okay."

When Jimmy walked into his room it seemed normal at first. Everything was arranged just as it had been before. There was no sign of explosives which was a good sign given Brian's track record. In short, nothing seemed off. It wasn't until he scanned the room a second time that he saw a jar on his table filled with moss and water and…

_An ecosphere?_

Jimmy went closer to inspect the jar. By now the water was clear and different kinds of animals were starting to make their presence known. There were different plants too, most of them being species that would exist in local rivers. The environment seemed to be sustaining itself well which was the best part. It was the most low-stress pet slash science experiment someone could ask for. It was another one of those things that Jimmy had always wanted but just never found the time to get.

_How did he manage to sneak this into my room?_

"How did you manage to sneak this into my room!"

* * *

Jimmy is sitting outside as the sun is starting to rise.

It was one of those weird traditions that had begun when he hadn't been paying much attention. It was a way to cope with restlessness mostly, with those cases that were extra gruesome and woke him with nightmares if letting him sleep at all. In the past he had been torn apart over these things, nearly quitting the job altogether after one of the worst sleepless periods, but now it had become a natural part of life. Life was all just learning to cope, so Jimmy did. He would wake up with a start, he would get a book, he would sit outside and read while the sun rose. 

His times in the morning allowed him to take a little bit of his life back from the FBI. The chaos of the job was enough to drive any person insane and even before the Ripper, there were already so few instances that allowed him to be completely out of reach. If his one act of rebellion was a few hours to himself then so be it. It gave him time to let his brain wander, to read books on everything from physics to music. It was his way of staying stable, even if at times it got felt and he noticed that there was no one was around to ask him a question

“What are you reading?”

Jimmy turned around to see Brian standing in the fame of the doorway, holding a mug in one hand and a plate of orange slices in the other. He had been up for a while, it was obvious, but it was still surprising to see him out. There were few secrets between the two, there was little reason for there to be, but this was one of those things that Jimmy had never really talked about.  
Somehow Brian had just known, he supposed.

  
“Parallel Worlds,” Jimmy said as Brian sat down next to him on the porch steps. From here he could see the steam still coming off the top of the mugs. He didn’t yet take one when Brian offered.

“What’s it about?”

“The multiverse theory,” Jimmy answered, looking back down at the pages. He could feel Brian shifting towards him to lean into the book in an attempt to scan the page. It was stupid, especially given he could just ask to look at it, but that was just his way of doing things.

“Physics kicked my ass when I first did it,” Brian said after moving away from Jimmy and back into his own space. “My teacher hated me. Said I talked too much or something.”

“Well, actually that hasn’t changed much.”

“Well, actually fuck you.” The two paused for a second, lingering on the lightness of the moment. Then. “Tell me more.”

Jimmy gave an exaggerated sigh, closing the book, and putting it aside. He looked at Brian who was still looking at the sunrise, then he turned to watch the sunrise too. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything. I want to hear it all.”

“I can’t summarize the whole field of quantum physics for you in one morning.”

“So we’ll do it over the course of some more mornings," Brian offered like it was all just that simple. Maybe it was. "Also I'm not asking you to summarize all of quantum physics, asshole. Believe it or not, I took physics in college too and was top of the class that time. I just want to know what’s got you so hooked that you’re reading at the crack of dawn, dude.”

Jimmy stayed silent for a second, letting himself absorb the world around him. It was early in the morning just as it had always been, and he was seated on his porch just as he always did, but this time someone was there with him. This morning Brian was there and everything was different but also the same. Maybe that could be okay.

“It’s about where we come from and it’s also about where we’re going,” Jimmy started, staring at nothing and everything while he collected his thoughts. “It’s about everything. The theory of everything, theology, philosophy. It talks about time and space. It talks about the end of time and space. It talks about those universes where we got everything right.”

“And the ones where we got everything wrong?”

“Those too.”

Jimmy and Brian sat together and apart, the two of them in their worlds despite being inches away from each other. Brian was ruminating over the past, he was ruminating over every choice that had brought him to this position and Jimmy could tell. In the same way, Brain could tell that Jimmy was focused on the future and everything that could go wrong from here.

“I think that in some universe everything has to be alright,” Jimmy admitted, causing Brian to turn away from the sky to look at him. “There are so many different worlds and possibilities out there. Maybe there’s one where we deserve her, you know? We do the right thing and we listen. Maybe we save the day in that one and our hearts are still hurt but everything is fine. We go to the store and create a new universe where we pick an orange instead of an apple, where you order water instead of a sprite, but still, everything is fine. For every choice we make, there has to be one where the ripper never happens and our hearts are whole.”

“And there’s a universe where we never met,” Brain stated and Jimmy looked back at him.

They saw each other. They always had, only now it was in a different light. They looked at each other with the knowledge that they might be bad people, horrible people even. Then they looked with the knowledge that maybe, for the most part, they were just okay people trying to make the best out of the little that they had left. They reconstructed bodies and their lives until it resembled something they could work with, and that was what life was really: making something from what you were given.

And Jimmy smiled lightly, turning his face as if an audience was here.

_We are so fucked, aren’t we?_

“What was that?” Brian asked, suddenly.

_What._

“What?”

_What._

“There, you just did it again.”

_Oh. THAT._

“What are you looking at?”

“Nothing!” Jimmy replied, turning back to Brian who only gave him an unimpressed look. “Seriously. It’s nothing.”

"Right," Brian said, the smile on his face not yet faded. He didn't believe Jimmy, obviously, but he wasn't going to push. That was fine for now.

They sat until they were older. They sat until they were dead. They sat until everything stopped existing and sat until nothing began. They sat until they were one and the same. They sat until they were back years ago and also until they were far in the future. 

"Hard to believe this is all going to be over soon," Brian sighed calmly. "It's the end of an era."

"An era may be the wrong way to describe a murder case…. but it's the end of something that's for sure."

"I think the first thing I'll do after all of this is nap. Just pop some melatonin and go into like complete hibernation for a month."

"Or until the next serial killer decides to make books out of skin."

"Is it wrong to say I miss an old fashioned serial killer?" Brian laughed. "I mean the ripper case is thrilling and all, but I have to be honest I kinda enjoy not fearing for my life."

"We have been doing a lot of the whole fearing for our lives thing recently, haven't we?"

"Guess we have." Brian starts before something comes over him. "Should we go?"

"Where? Inside?"

"Anywhere."

"Why?"

"Well…"

"Quite…"

"Well, well."

"Quite; quite," Jimmy is sure that they were going nowhere but in a circle. It was fine really. He had always liked circles anyway. "We could seek something out. That's a step in the right direction."

Brian considered it for a second, then a look came across his face. He had decided his path. They both had. "I like to know where I am, where I'm going. Even if I don't know where I am, I like to know that. If we go there's no knowing."

"No knowing what?" Jimmy asked.

"If we'll ever come back."

"We don't want to come back." And it was the truth. Wasn't it?

"Yeah, you're probably right, but do we want to go?"

"We'll be free," Jimmy insisted.

"Will we?" Brian smiled. "It's the same sky."

"We've come this far." 

"And that's why we're going to catch the ripper, even if it kills us."

There were people born to be martyrs, then there were those people who confused enthusiasm with a willingness to die for a cause. Jimmy wasn't sure where Brian landed. He wasn't quite sure of where he landed himself either. What separated a willingness to die for a good cause and just a willingness to die besides the layer of superiority brushed onto one after all?

"It's all coming to a close now," Brian said, his eyes fixed on the sky. The sun was almost peeking over the tops of houses now. It was almost time to go. "We have Hannibal right where we want him. We just have to hope everything is perfect. Then we can lay this shit to rest and everything can just go back to normal."

_Do you really want that?_

"Can you tell me more about parallel worlds? Until the sun is finished rising?" Brian asked after a while. Jimmy nodded in agreement. He always would.

"So the deal is anything could happen" Jimmy starts.

Then the rest of the world pauses.

A blackout.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for all of your kudos and comments throughout the past few weeks!! i love seeing them and I love interacting with you all. crazy to think that the journey is almost over. i hope you enjoy this chapter and the next! they're a bit longer than the others but i hope it's worth it. love you always z&p nation until next week <3


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for mentions of alcholoism

How everything could go wrong in a second.

“Is it wrong to say that this is boring?” Brian asks, reclining his chair and closing his eyes.

Jimmy and Brian are sitting together in a car waiting for orders. It was all part of the plan you see. Jack and Will went to Hannibal’s and took care of the dirty work while Jimmy and Brian waited in a car two blocks away and were back-up in case anything went wrong. Long story short? Jimmy and Brian were assigned to sit in a car and entertain themselves for a few hours under the guise of doing something actually productive. It was safe if a little disappointing but they weren’t exactly complaining about a light workload for once.

“Considering they might be getting stabbed-”

“They’re not getting stabbed, Jimmy. Hannibal’s gotta be like what? 130 pounds soaking wet?”

“If you paid attention to any of the previous murders you would know-”

“I know. I know. He’s strong or whatever. This is why I don’t work with you anymore,” Brain groans, opening a single eye to look over at Jimmy who was gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles. If there is one thing Brian has to be honest about, it’s that he has never seen Jimmy so paranoid. The dude was white, like whiter than his normal white white. It was pretty bad given that this was the same guy who looked at a bee corpse and laughed.

Weirdo.

“I just don’t get the hype?” Brian starts, trying to piece together the words in his head in a way that didn’t sound impolite. Not that he had really cared much before. “He’s not doing anything new. He isn’t a trendsetter or anything. He’s just European and tall.”

“This is funny to you? Jack could be dying right now and you’re making jokes!” Jimmy says, the shock in his voice audible. Something in Brian’s mind was aware that if he were sitting up he probably would have just gotten smacked by Jimmy which was deserved. Unfair because Jimmy was amused by Brian’s jokes, even if he wouldn’t admit it. But deserved.

“Jack is not dying!”

“We do not know that!”

“Yes, we do!” Brian argues, hints of a light exasperation slipping into his voice. Was this what denial felt like? Maybe. It was hard to absorb the reality of their current situation. Sure, Jimmy and Brian had been through their fair share of stressful experiences together, but nothing like this.

Even the premise sounded nuts: A cannibal named Hannibal who managed to slip under the nose of the FBI for months? It had to be the plot to a bizarre and at times vaguely homophobic book.

“All I’m saying is if anyone is dying it’s Will Graham.” All grievances aside, Will just wasn’t prepared in the way that Jack and Hannibal were. That was discounting the seizures, constant pill-popping, and sweat issue. No amount of medical-grade antiperspirant was curing whatever the fuck was happening with his body. “One flashing light and it’s over for him.”

“Jesus.”

“What? We were both thinking it.”

“That doesn’t mean you can just go ahead and say it!” Jimmy insists. “This is how you make enemies.”

“By being right?”

“By having no filter.”

“Well, what else am I supposed to do? Lie?” Brian replies, a bit annoyed by Jimmy’s sudden refusal to play along. “It’s not like you haven’t said worse."

"Oh, so this is a competition now?"

"Nobody is making a competition except you!"

"Well, obviously-"

"Well, obviously. Can't take you anywhere, you know?" 

"Well, let's just drop it then," Jimmy sighed. 

The car went silent except for the sounds of some newscast on the radio.

Brian could notice the way that Jimmy's breathing paused every few seconds. He was upset. He had been for a while. He was also always the one less likely to talk about it. Where Brian had always worn his heart on his sleeve, giving it away to any passerby that seemed like they could be something good with him, Jimmy kept himself closed off. It was one of those traits that had always amazed Brian, it was one of those traits that had always deeply scared him too.

Jimmy wasn't stupid. He could act like it. He wasn't. At all. In fact, when needed he could be logical to the point of losing track of himself. He could be cold if needed and cruel if needed. He could shut certain parts of himself off. But these were solutions that only lasted so long and Jimmy knew this too. 

It wasn't only the being cold that mattered. It was figuring out how to cope when everything came rushing back in. 

"Hey, I uh- I never really got the chance to say I'm really fucking proud of you dude."

"For what?"

"It's been a few months simce you got sober, right?"

"10 months," Jimmy confirmed.

Had it really almost been a year?

Brian still clearly remembers when Jimmy had made the announcement. It was something that Jimmy had snuck into the conversation, hoping not to make a big deal out of it. Beverly and Brian knew better than to push the topic further and opted for showing that they were proud through smiles. 

What Brian never knew until Beverly's phone had been discovered was how much she had talked to Jimmy after it. How much of the good and the bad she had seen. How patient she had been even when Brian probably wouldn't have been.

How honest too.

Brian had seen his fair share too. A lot of the bad. Grieving was never easy, even if it was your job to push grief aside. Jimmy had managed his grief but it could be painful at times, even without the added challenge of staying sober. Brian always did his best to make sure that Jimmy knew he was there, even if he didn't necessarily want Brian there, even if things were going to be ugly. Brian always did his best to make sure that Jimmy knew he was there, but Jimmy had done all of this for himself.

Maybe that was what Brian was proudest of.

"These past few months have been a lot, but I'm seriously happy for you," Brian says, opening his eyes to look at Jimmy. He smiles for a second, not because it's the polite thing to do, but because he is genuinely happy for how far Jimmy has come. He is grateful to have Jimmy in his life and that deserves a smile, even in the middle of a stakeout.

"If Jack makes it out alive and finds out you have been crying in the stakeout car you will be the only one dying tonight." Jimmy jokes, not smiling at Brian per se, but the corners of his mouth title upward. Maybe he's proud of himself too. 

"Remind me to never say anything nice to you ever again."

"Like you wouldn't do it anyways?"

That was true.

The car went silent again. It started as a happy silence, the rest of the world seeming far away when stacked against the jokes and conversation, but as the minutes continued on this happy aspect disappeared. Things became boring quickly when it was just you and your co-worker in a car accompanied by only the shitty radio newscast that was talking about stocks.

This is why Brian made the executive decision to liven things up a little.

Brian opened his phone and fumbled with the settings for a few seconds until "I'm Still Standing" began to play quietly on the car speaker. He then tossed his phone aside and moved his seat out of its reclined position. Once he was sitting up he began to bop to the music, much to the dismay of Jimmy who was sitting right next to him with the most dissatisfied look on his face.

"Come on. Loosen up."

"We are absolutely not doing this right now," Jimmy states, trying to keep his eyes on the road in an attempt at feigning disinterest. It was an attempt that would have worked if it weren't for his fingers tapping along to the beat. That and Brian knew that he loved this song obviously.

"Suit yourself," Brian shrugged as he turned up the radio. If Jimmy was going to play tough and not join the car karaoke party then Brian would have fun by himself. He closed his eyes and with a smile started to sing. "You could never know what it's like. Your blood, like winter, freezes just like ice."

"You are the most tone-deaf person I have ever heard."

"Uh-huh," Brian dismisses, dancing in his seat. "a cold, lonely light that shines from you. You'll wind up like the wreck you hide behind that mask you use."

As if he had been waiting for their whole lives for this moment, Jimmy turned to brian and started to sing too. "And did you think this fool could never win? Well look at me, I'm a-coming back again"

"I got a taste of love in a simple way," Brian chimed in, matching Jimmy's pitch in his own out of tune way. Well, trying to at least. He had the spirit. Jimmy passed him the mic with a nod and he continued. "And if you need to know while I'm still standing you just fade away."

"Don't you know I'm still standing better than I ever did?" The two sang together, dancing in their seats as much as they could. Brian in some bouncy kind of way and Jimmy snapping along to the rhythm. "Looking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid.

"And I'm still standing after all this time! Picking up the pieces of my life without you on my mind."

Brian took the lead again. "I'm still standing."

Jimmy joined. "Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.:

"I'm still standing."

And maybe they were singing because they knew this was the end. Maybe these were the last normal moments of their lives and they knew it. Maybe they just needed one good thing to hold onto.

Maybe they were singing because they knew all their good fortune had been spent. 

After all, everything had a reason, and there was a reason why it wasn't shocking when Brian said. “We’re not going to win tonight, are we?”

And there was a reason why Jimmy shook his head, clinging onto the last bits of air that he could get into his lungs and replied. “No. Probably not.”

Because Price and Zeller weren’t the heroes in this one.

They never would be.

Everyone talked about the fear of dying. It was the most common fear after all. Civilizations were built to avoid the inevitability of death, religion was created to cope with the idea of death. Living, for the most part, was a series of meals with loved ones because time spent with others meant you had been there. But what if you hadn’t been there? What did it mean when you weren’t alive at all?

What did it mean to never really exist at all?

Price and Zeller are dead, but they’re also not. Not dead because they are too unimportant to be dead, but not alive either. Dead because death was a lack of something.

What represented Jimmy and Brian better than lacking?

“Jack should have called by now,” Brian says, taking the word from Jimmy's head as if he had said it himself.

Or maybe Jimmy had said it. He wasn’t really sure anymore.

“Do we leave?” Brian asked, but Jimmy knew what this really meant.

_Can we leave?_

“You go this way-I’ll go that way,” Jimmy replies.

Neither of them move.

“Okay, you go that way-I’ll go this way.”

And they don’t move.

And they don’t move.

And they don’t move.

And they don’t move.

And they don't move.

And they don’t move.

And it isn’t until a siren starts blaring that the two are real again, not because it is their choice, but because it had been decided.

"Ambulance."

Brian turned down the music and Jimmy started the ignition, not caring to look beyond what existed outside the front-view window. Neither of them took the time to breathe, maybe because they really didn’t know if they could breathe. 

They were seconds away from Hannibal’s house. There was only getting to Hannibal's house, which was only two blocks away, but they knew that two blocks were actually so much longer.

Brian and Jimmy knew that everything can go wrong in a second.

In his mind, Jimmy flips a coin.

Heads.

* * *

Brian was the first out of the car. Everything in order and all of his badges in sight. As soon as he stepped foot on the pavement there was a new side of him that came out, something that Jimmy had rarely seen even in previous cases. He moved with intent, telling first responders everything that he knew.

From the snippets of conversation that Jimmy could hear, Brian was going over the blood types of every person on the scene with first responders.

Jimmy remembers him pouring over documents in the morning. Was that what he had been doing?

He doesn't stick around long enough to ask.

Jimmy made his way to the entrance of the house, pausing when he saw Alana lying unconscious on the ground surrounded by paramedics. She was alive, barely, but alive.

He wondered if she was more alive right now than he had ever been.

But he kept moving forward.

He had been in Hannibal's house once. If things were different, he would have remembered it being bigger, but space was relative in distatster. Walking into the kitchen, past the teams of paramedics who were already getting ready to wheel bodies out, Jimmy realized that the kitchen was actually the only room in the house. 

He sees Will.

He sees Abigail.

And the reality that this had always been so much bigger than any of them comes rushing in.

And maybe Jimmy was wandering for a while, maybe he was a ghost among the goats that now haunted Hannibal Lecter’s house, maybe at any point he could turn around and reach out to Beverly and he too would be gone.

Maybe, but not quite.

As Jimmy opened the door to the wine closet Jack fell to the floor, a piece of glass still in his neck and his phone still opened. Phantom paramedics came rushing in, more fake than Jimmy himself, but real enough. Before his brain could process it Jack was being wheeled out and he was following along.

Evidence could be collected later. It was protocol. Death always came after life.

So why didn’t it feel like any lives were being saved now?

When Jimmy wasn't allowed into the ambulance he sat on the pavement. It was raining out. It was nice. Let his head cool down.

Maybe it would wash away the blood on his shoes. The blood on his hands.

He flips a coin. Tails.

At some point, Brian sat down next to him, not in much better shape.

They couldn't have known, could they? Jack had never called. They couldn't have known so why did it all feel like their fault? Why Brian and Jimmy so close together, but so far apart? Why was Brian so unwelcome next to Jimmy when they needed each other more than ever before and how did he know?

Why did they need each other?

"They want us back in the lab." Brian's voice is worn from barking orders. As much as he loved being in charge, he hated being in charge. It made him feel accountable. But that was part of the job. Maybe he needed to feel accountable. Maybe he needed to stop taking everything so lightly for once. Maybe, just this once, Jimmy could be angry because he needed some feeling of control. "I can drop you home if you want. It's just an autopsy report. I don't want you to feel like you have to do this."

"It's my job as much as it is yours," Jimmy says. His voice is dead. He’s dead. Brian is too. Maybe this is their form of judgment. "Who died?"

"Abigail Hobbs." And Jimmy knows how much Brian hates autopsies on kids, even if he tries cover it. In all of the years of the job that was the one thing that never got easier for him. Jimmy tried to make it lighter, but there was still this hidden look in his eyes that was filled with something that was far-out somewhere. It felt like disgust almost, and sadness too, but mostly powerlessness. 

It was wrong for kids to die like this.

"It seems like Will was trying to save her," Brian continues, it wasn't anything either of them could be sure of just yet, but any observation was better than none. "Like he was using the last bit of his strength."

"Can you get in contact with Bella?"

"She already knows."

"No. You. Us. I need her to hear it from us," Jimmy insists. It was the only right thing to do. "I want to find a way to get her with him, in case he…"

"Yeah," Brian chuckles, his lungs empty. "We'll figure it out, alright?"

Jimmy wants nothing more than to believe him. Brian wants nothing more than to believe himself.

This was how everything went wrong in a second.

* * *

When they got to the lab things went according to procedure.

They wore their coats just as actors in a play wore their costumes. They took their places at the table just as actors took their place on stage. The only difference here was you couldn't act death… or you couldn't act it more than once.

Abigail Hobbs had died with sadness in her eyes.

She had been murdered in the same way her father had tried to kill her, once again cut by a man who sold her a false idea of family. 

Her body became a tribute to all of the murders that had come before her. All of the girls who shared the same shape and eye color. All of the people who stood in the way of what Hannibal wanted.

She had been a person. Then she wasn't.

Hannibal had taken that from her too.

Jimmy pretends not to notice when Brian's eyes acquire the look. They're more muted this time. More sad than angry.

Maybe Jimmy had always been luckier than Brian in a way. He had always been more open to the concept of spirituality, even if never conforming to a singular belief.

Brian just saw dirt and a dead girl.

When they get into the car to head to the hospital after the autopsy Jimmy swears Brian is going to scream. He doesn't. He is silent the whole ride.

The radio stayed quiet now.

* * *

"I brought you a yogurt bar," Brian offers, holding out the probably expired vending machine treat to Jimmy.

The trips to the hospital have become normal by now and the two of them are on speaking terms again.

They needed to be. It was too much pain otherwise.

"You know these things are no good for you, right?"

"You’re ungrateful and an asshole. Accept the stupid yogurt bar because it almost got stuck and I almost cried," Brian states more firmly.

The two of them spent much of their past few days crying. They also spent a bit of it laughing. Jack was supposed to survive this somehow. It was a miracle he didn't remove the piece of glass from his neck, or less a miracle more really good training. Alana and Will were going to survive too, with some trouble.

Hannibal still hadn't been found. Maybe he never would be. Secretly Brian and Jimmy hoped that this would be the case. Hanibal would disappear and they could forget about him forever. 

They had taken extra care to always keep the windows and doors at home locked.

Brian sat down next to Jimmy, sort of leaning into him out of exhaustion. The two hadn't slept much between the paperwork, hours spent looking over the evidence, hospital visits, and anxiety-induced insomnia. They were functional enough without sleep. Just another thing you developed from the job. That didn't stop them from dropping their guard whenever they could.

Much of their time in the hospital was spent waiting for Jack who, for the past two days, had been mostly conscious. Bella shared a room with him which was nice even if Jimmy still wasn't sure how they had managed it. Brian and Jimmy mostly tried to make Jack and Bella laugh when they could. Laughter was important. It gave you something that felt alive and they all needed that right now.

If Jack and Bella were up to it, Jimmy and Brian also brought some games with them too. Scrabble because it was the Jack and Bella staple, Cards Against Humanity which Brian had pushed in the event that they were all too tired to think, and Apples to Apples which was the inoffensive and easy middle ground.

Alana still hadn't woken up. It would be some time before she did. Her head was injured badly, Brian had known that much from seeing her that night. She would live though. It was still hard to figure out if she would permanently need a wheelchair or not.

Then there was Will. 

He was still in a coma, but he was living. Brian and Jimmy had only gone to see him one time so far, they figured they would try again when he woke up. Jimmy had also decided to take care of Will's dogs for however long the hospital stay was which, while ideal for the dogs, was less than ideal for Brian who had yet to get used to being mauled by Winston every time he came inside.

Freddie had stopped by once, more likely than not for her own nefarious reasons, but she did bring by a salad for Brian and Jimmy. It was a nice gesture, especially now that they had sworn off meat. She talked with Brian for a while about small stuff--how her girlfriend was doing, new attention that she had garnered on an article. 

It didn't take a genius to know she started those conversations to hide her camera.

"She knows we're not stupid, right?"

"Shh. Let her think she's in control here." And that was that.

Dr. Chilton had come in more than once much to literally everyone's dismay, but they tried to forget those days. Nobody particularly enjoyed being around Dr. Chilton in a normal situation. When visiting loved ones in a hospital? Chilton's self-serving attitude and generally pretentious nature made even the sanest people want to commit a crime.

There was more than one instance where Brian had come back with his shoulders tense after an encounter with Chilton.

"You want tea? I'll get you tea." Was usually Jimmy's response.

As time went on hospital visits got easier. Games were played with Bella and Jack when the two of them were up for it, Brian and Jimmy took the time to duck into Alana's room to say hi when she woke up. They even visited Will when he woke up. Well, more accurately, Brian visited Will and face timed Jimmy who was at home. It let Will see his dog from the hospital. Jimmy took the credit for that idea. Brian, in an attempt to not seem like the jerk of the two, even gifted an old mp3 player to Will who, much to his surprise, actually seemed happy to have some Taylor Swift songs to listen to.

Things hadn't quite begun to come together, and maybe they never would, but something near that was okay for now.

Besides, weren't Jimmy and Brian the lucky ones?

* * *

Jimmy was already seated on the porch when Brian came outside, handing him a manila folder without a word. It had been a while since Brian had joined him in the morning. Jimmy wonders if he still feels unwelcome if he actually is unwelcome. That was why Jimmy had started making his own coffee, wasn't it? His own way of saying "I need to be alone" that Brian never dared push.

Until now.

"What's this?" Jimmy asks, not yet opening the folder.

Brian sits down on the porch inches away from Jimmy, no longer avoiding eye contact he speaks. "You've always been perceptive. I want your thoughts."

Jimmy takes that as his cue to look over the contents of the folder. 

Inside are medical records from that night. You had your normal things. Paper's about the neck injuries that Jack had sustained, a picture of an X-Ray that probably belonged to Alana. Then there were Will's records.

He hadn't just been stabbed. He had been cut. Hannibal had plunged the knife into Will's stomach with medical precision, knowing that Will would bleed, but that wasn't the only goal here.

"He wanted Will to live," Jimmy says. Brian chuckles.

"So I'm not going insane after all," Brian starts, "I've been beating myself up for the past few days trying to figure out-"

"Why Will?"

Jimmy looks up from the papers to face Brian, who is already looking at him. The two see eye to eye, and they always had, but this was a new understanding. This was knowing only one person would ever share your pain, and anger, and sadness. This was knowing one person would have your back no matter what. This was knowing all of that because of the larger thing that Jimmy and Brian knew.

"There's no right side anymore," Jimmy said.

Brian didn't respond to that point. He didn't need to. Jimmy already knew.

"I compared against all of the other victims. There was no way it wasn't intentional."

"And Will was seeing Hannibal for therapy, right?"

"Before Jack went in Will made a call," Brian starts, looking back up at the sky so Jimmy does too. "No transcript but uh- you don't exactly need a rocket science degree to piece that one together."

Jimmy goes quiet. Will had sold them out. Will was part of why this had happened. Then, out of hysteria or relief, he laughs. "Not even a burner phone? Really?"

"You think for a guy that gets into criminals' heads for a living he would maybe catch a hint."

"I mean, even I would have done that."

"A flip phone is like 30 bucks at Wallgreens, dude. I would give him the money."

"I feel kind of violated now," Jimmy says, feigning offense. "It's like he didn't even bother trying to get us dinner before getting in our pants."

Brian shoots Jimmy a look, then considers the words for a second, then gives a confused smile as he replies. "That's actually exactly what it feels like."

"I'm very good at metaphors."

"Simile, actually. You used li-"

"You're not going to lecture me on grammar at 6 in the morning, right? I'm not even wearing my good slippers."

"That was entirely your decision."

"No. You started organizing everything and-"

"There is literally a mat for shoes right next to the door. Forgive me for thinking it's weird to be walking around the house with bits of brain in my shoes!"

"Brain is a bit of an exaggeration. Blood? Definitely. We haven't seen brains in a while actually."

"I am so disturbed that you keep count."

"And you don't?"

"No. I'm a well-adjusted adult actually."

"There is nothing even remotely well adjusted about you," Jimmy states, and there's an honest smile on his face.

Brian and Jimmy had done a lot of dishonesty in these past few weeks too. It didn't seem like they were going to be more honest anytime soon. Probably for the better that neither of them were big on the whole divine retribution thing.

Silence falls over the two. Jimmy puts the folder aside and sips his coffee, smiling into the mug. Brian watches the sunrise with full attention, marking down how every beam of light as if he were going to paint it later. Mostly, the two just sat together. 

It was the first morning of a new part of their lives, one that should have been terrifying.

But they could be content like this.

When words become enough again, Jimmy looks at Brian and asks. "So what the hell do we do now?"

"I don't know," Brian admits, hesitating in a way where Jimmy can practically see him sorting through every file in his brain for an answer. Anything from a previous case or textbook that could lead them in the right direction. Then he stopped and smiled, probably because he realized the same thing as Jimmy. "This is a losing game."

And they were alone, but not really. Alone because nobody else could understand what they were feeling. Alone because nobody else understood that much of their life was just performance, the curtain only coming down in those moments that they didn't need anybody else to see. Alone because their lives were over.

They were dead and alive.

They would never really get to have normal lives again.

"We were never a part of this, were we?" Jimmy asks. It sounds cynical, but it's not. It's more of an observation if anything. Brian and Jimmy were never important in this story. If they died then they died. They were no different than props in a background in the grand scheme of it all, and sure they had people that would mourn their deaths. Jack would mourn; Alana; Brian's family; maybe even Jimmy's twin, but that wasn't what Jimmy meant.

What Jimmy meant was that there was never any controlling the situations. There was no just telling Jack or just stopping Beverly. There were no clear-cut villains or heroes. Maybe they were villains themselves through some lens. 

But they weren't important.

Brian and Jimmy would never be enough to stop the inevitable. Brian and Jimmy would never be enough to really exist. Brian and Jimmy would never be enough to be anything more than props in a story, only acting to serve the audience's desires.

More importantly, they had never really been a part of anything.

They would come in quietly, crack a few jokes. Then, when they were done, they would exit as quietly as they had come in. No one would ever notice they existed.

"We don't have to play by rules anymore," Brian offered, turning to look Jimmy in the eyes. "A space was never made for us, so we can be our own side. A team. An alliance."

Brian and Jimmy had been on the same team for as long as either could remember, which wasn't long. Ever since the ripper case began they had become so intertwined with each other that any memories were hard to trace, as though they hadn't existed at all before they worked this case together, and maybe they hadn't.

"We should get breakfast," Jimmy said, becoming cheery as he stood up. There's a good diner just in the next town.

"I really could go for a good diner sandwich," Brian sighed, following Jimmy up on his feet. He yawned and stretched a bit. "Let me just get changed into...actual clothes first?" He continued, gesturing down to his pajama pants. "You drive or I drive?"

"You look like shit and I would prefer not to die by tired Brian driving so-"

"Oh. Fuck off," Brian yawned, flipping Jimmy off as he walked back inside. When he walked back out, the world had come back to life. Brian and Jimmy walked to the car talking about some sketch that one or the other had seen at some point in time. They got into the car and headed to their next destination, one that was offstage.

Hannibal did not kill them that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hiii i hope you like this chapter :) the next two or three may not be as long but I hope they can be a bit more fun and in tune with the humor tag. don't worry though, the ending is going to (hopefully) be something special. please feel free to leave a kudos or comment as always! i love interacting with you guys and hope this fic makes you think a little <3 stay safe all until next week <3
> 
> also here is the link to brian and jimmy's car playlist if anyone wants https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2KQgTu51q4wJkQ3uoUwwie


	10. Chapter 10

“Yeah, that’s it,” Brian starts, “I've lost all capacity for disbelief. I'm not sure that I could even be skeptical."

When Zeller and Price enter the picture again, they are looking down at the body of a man who had died via deepthroating an eel. Maybe it hadn’t exactly been their most disturbing case, but it was definitely up there, to say the least. Yeah, the bee lady had been pretty fucked up and there was human cello dude, but death by eel wasn’t exactly an ideal way to go.

“Fucking rich people,” Brian mumbles as he squats down to look at Mason Verger. Jimmy follows, squatting down on the other side of the body, and taking pictures as Brian continued. “That takes spit or swallow to a whole new extreme.”

“Think he took ‘spitters are quitters’ a bit too literally? Jimmy adds, gesturing for another investigator to come over and cover the body with a tarp for now. “An eel? Who has an eel in their house?”

“Fucking rich people,” Brian replies as he stands up. 

Jimmy took a few seconds more to look at the body, wincing at the imagined pain, then stood up to say. “Bullet broke the glass. Verger fell in.”

“Eel went down his throat.”

Jimmy and Brian looked at each other, neither of them entirely speechless, but there definitely was a level of disturbed awe in it all.

“It could have been electric,” Jimmy suggests to the mental question of what could make it worse?

“At this point? I wouldn't be surprised if he was into that."

“It's not entirely uncommon."

“You would know, right?” Brain sighs, walking away from the body then pausing to look back at Jimmy. “Would it be wrong for me to say I want sushi right now?”

Jimmy pauses, tilting his head to search for an answer, then decides. “Depends on what kind of sushi.” There was a pause as Jimmy walked up to Brian. Then, when Brian wouldn’t stop staring, he continued. “Obviously, eel would be inappropriate given the content of the murder, but I don’t see why you would go wrong with Tuna.”

“Salmon Tempura Roll?”

“From the place by us?”

“Yeah.”

“They use spicy mayo eel sauce.”

“Well, shit, Jim.," Brian says, elbowing Jimmy. "Now I feel like a bad person.”

"This is your breaking point? Not the rug burn incident?"

"You have to give me credit. That was a really funny one."

"Mathematically, if you were constructing a joke, you did have all the ingredients you need." A skeleton in a fursuit. Fur burn. It had been an absolutely ruthless day. Jokes were cracked every other second, Jimmy and Brian coming up with punchlines one after the other. It had been one of the funniest days on the job, that is until it went "too far" and the suspect's mother started to cry. To be fair though, Brian and Jimmy had no clue she would still be on the scene when they got there. "But that was so wrong from a moral standpoint."

"Special Agents Price and Zeller?" Brian and Jimmy turned around to look at the source of the voice. Sure enough, the voice belonged to another agent who looked way too dazed and confused to actually be working. "You're needed elsewhere."

Brian and Jimmy followed a few steps behind the terrified agent, mostly shoving each other and cracking jokes as they walked until they came to a pause outside of a closed door. The other agent turned away from the door and gestured for Brian and Jimmy to enter, a nauseated look coming across his face causing Brian and Jimmy to look at each other, then at the door, then back to the squeamish agent.

"It can't be that bad, right?" Brian asked.

"It was pretty bad," The agent assured.

"Scale of 1 to 10?" Jimmy asks.

"10," The agent responds.

Brian and Jimmy look at each other.

"Can't really be a 10 can it?"

"A newbie ten is a 5 or 6 for us," Brian shrugs, nodding at Jimmy.

"7 at most."

"Yeah."

"It's a 10," The other agent insists.

Brian sighs as he puts his gloved hand on the doorknob. "Well, I guess we'll see." He turns the knob gently, then stops before the door opens to look at Jimmy again. "You go? I go?" To this Jimmy steps centimeters in front of the door, and when Brian opens it.

"Why would you pull it outwards if I'm standing here?"

"Sorry! Insomnia."

Then, Brian pushes the door open. Jimmy steps inside silently. Brian follows. Then the two go dead silent.

A minute passes.

Maybe two.

Inside the room, there is a nursery set up. A pig is resting on a table, attached to a heartbeat just feet away. On the table, there is also a child, unmoving, unbreathing. It was stillborn. The pig had given birth to a stillborn and Brian and Jimmy were standing in its nursery.

"Nothing ever gets to me," Jimmy starts, not moving from the spot where he first entered. As a matter of fact, he does little more than blink in some terrified awe. "But this comes the closest."

"Fucking rich people," Brian exhales. He too is unblinking, though entirely more intrigued by it than Jimmy. Not that the intrigue offsets the general terror, disgust, and 80 other emotions that were happening as a result of this. "Are we going to have to test this?"

"Probably," Jimmy sighs.

"You were supposed to say no."

"I'm a little in shock right now."

Brian is the first to move, not daring to go anywhere near the stillborn, but still inspecting the pig. "I've read a bit about interspecific pregnancy," He says, tracing the cut along the pig's abdomen with his gloved hand. "I don't get why anyone would even bother risking it. Rate of survival is next to nothing. And that's in a lab."

"The rate of survival wouldn't matter so much if it was about creating psychological trauma, would it," Jimmy asks, inspecting the decorations. The nursery was built like a horror story, it wouldn't be surprising if it was part of a larger one.

"No." Brian pauses. "A pig's gestational period is about half that of a human's, but its organs are similar to ours. It's why pigs are being looked at as the future of medicinal trials." Brian moved away from the pig and took a sharp inhale. "But even in the best labs, the timing needs to be just right to even give it a chance of working. With no access to CRISPR? No scaffolding for stem cells? Frankenstein's fucked up little art project was doomed from the beginning. Even if the child had survived birth, it wouldn't last long. The fetus would reject the pig tissue."

"But even a short life would be devastating. It completely amplifies the feelings of loss," Jimmy concludes.

"Bingo," Brian says, smiling lightly at Jimmy.

Jimmy completes the smile. It all made sense now. It made sense in a way that nobody else needed to know.

They made a pretty great team, didn't they?

"I guess that little piggy didn't cry 'wee wee wee' all the way home," Jimmy jokes, his smile fading when he caught a glimpse of the fetus. 

"Yeah. Not now, man," Brian sighs, still feeling pretty weird about the corpse in the room "Not that I don't really want to crack a pig in a blanket joke."

"I was going up the 'Three Little Pigs' route personally."

"That's more a sketch concept than anything else."

"It could just be a running gag."

"Arguable." The argument wasn't going further, not here at least. They didn't need a repeat of Furgate, especially since Jack wasn't the one overlooking them right now. "You wanna wrap things up here then grab some food on the way to the lab?"

"Hm. I missed having no time to digest my food," Jimmy says, only half-jokingly. It wasn't at all unusual for Brian and Jimmy to have to eat quickly or skip meals altogether on their busier days. It led to a lot of interesting dietary habits to say the least. "IHOP?"

That had been their thing. When it was the three of them that had been their thing. Brian, Jimmy, and Beverly had spent their fair share of mornings cramped into a little booth in the back of the restaurant. It usually went like this: Brian and Beverly sat together and Jimmy got his own side, Brian ordered his usual while Beverly and Jimmy ordered something new and laughed at him for being so habitual. Mostly though, there was a lot of laughter. Beverly's laugh with a little snort, Brian's laugh that was warm and served an audience, and Jimmy's.

"I don't know if we have Booth 13 time, but we can do take out," Brian replies.

Take-out. That was good enough.

"Well, you don't have to tell me twice," Jimmy says. "Get back to work!"

Zeller and Price wrap up their work in the room, only cracking a few (okay, maybe a bit more than a few) pig jokes along the way. When they got to the door they pause to look at each other, making sure they don't seem at all bothered by whatever the fuck it was that they just saw. Then, they laugh, and they are still laughing as they walk out of the room together.

* * *

Zeller and Price are in the lab together, both of them staring at Mason Verger's corpse that was ass-up face-down on the inspection table.

"So they?" Brian musters.

"Uh-huh," 

"Son of a bitch. With a-"

"Cattle prod," Jimmy confirms, grimacing. "Yes."

"Son of a bitch."

"And before you ask they didn-"

"Fuck."

It wasn't that this was any more disturbing than pig baby, this was by no means more disturbing. This was just a much more visceral experience, and not in any way that was at all positive. Sure, Mason had probably deserved to suffer in this horrible way, but did they? Had they really done anything so fucked up that they deserved to endure analyzing the cattle prod milking corpse?

"You know we're asking Jack for a raise tomorrow, right?" Brian says, turning his head away from the body and towards Jimmy. "Like, this is way above our paygrade."

"Oh yeah. Can we throw in an Olive Garden gift card too?"

"Can't. I'm banned from Olive Garden."

"What?" Jimmy asks, hitting Brian's arm. "What did you do,"

"I fake proposed to Freddie Lounds."

"You fake proposed to Freddie Lounds?"

"Look, we wanted desert and-"

"Why didn't I know about this?"

"I really didn't think it was that important."

"No, I would like to know when the asshole I live with is banned from my favorite restaurant chain."

"Okay. Well, Olive Garden is hardly a restaurant, so," Brian dismisses, getting his equipment in order. He offers Jimmy a tired smile, one that only the two of them understand, then hits Jimmy with a pair of gloves before putting them on. "Come on. We've got work to do."

"Looking at dead people. How romantic." Jimmy jokes, putting his gloves on. 

"I've known you for years. You don't get romantic anymore."

"As somebody that is familiar with you after a breakup?" Jimmy starts. "It's for the best."

"Are you implying that you would break up with me if we were together?"

"Yes. That's exactly what I'm saying."

"Well, excuse me for thinking that dead bodies were our thing."

"Well, you're right about that much," Jimmy pauses. "Maybe we could get little skeleton rings." 

"Do those exist?"

"Everything exists on the internet."

"You don't need to remind me. I'm still scarred by that Yeti novel you read."

"It was passionate."

"Actually, I think you're just a freak, but whatever." A realization as Brian speaks. Then." Maybe we really do need to get hobbies."

That much was probably true.

This was also probably why they were both single.

The two shared a laugh and then got to work.

* * *

As Brian is looking at the body, Jimmy can hear him mumbling. "Lonnie, Lonnie, Lonnie."

Jimmy knew what that meant. Brian had found something.

And it was for that reason that he had found nothing.

Brian and Jimmy didn't discuss it.

* * *

It was late when they were finally done.

As Jimmy and Brian were leaving the lab, Brian elbowed Jimmy's arm and gave him a look.

Brian was asking if he was sure of this.

If Jimmy said no they could turn back now.

But he wanted Jimmy's permission

Jimmy looks at Brian, and with all the honesty in his body he says. "You worry too much sometimes, Brian."

"Okay," Brian scoffs. Then he laughs and Jimmy does too.

They leave the lab, not quite the same people as when they walked in.

* * *

At around 8 P.M. the next day, Hannibal Lecter is taken into custody.

At around 8:45 P.M. he is standing in the lab, Zeller and Price collecting his DNA in complete silence.

They don't look at Hannibal more than they need to. The anger can't catch up if they don't look at him. So Zeller scraped the dirt from under Hannibal's nails without daring to look up, and Prince collected strands of hair without making eye contact.

"I'm going to test these. If you need anything..." Price said as Zeller swabbed Hannibal's mouth.

"Yeah. I'll be fine."

And Price left.

His grieving had always been the quieter of the two, the more hidden of the two, but Brian could tell. He knew when Jimmy left the room that he wasn't only leaving to test hairs. His speech had been too hurried, and he became distant. He didn't leave because he had nothing better to do, he left because he needed out. 

Brian couldn't blame him for that.

The lab goes silent and Brian goes back to his workstation. He looks down at the tools in front of him, noting how he had trained himself to use them with surgical precision over the years. He had learned to cut people open, just as Hannibal had, and a more philosophical part of him if left wondering if a blade in their hands would look the same.

Brian tries to focus, but his body and mind are heavy with grief, so he asks. "That day Price and I were over. Was it her?"

It was a story they didn't tell other people. 

A few days after Beverly's death, Zeller and Price had gone to Hannibal's house. They were sure of his true nature already, but they needed proof. They needed proof to believe because they were scientists, and in denial, and hurting. So they went to Hannibal's. They went to Hannibal's and he offered them food with a smile on his face, offered them a seat at his dining room table, and as any good host would be, he was sad when Zeller and Price turned these things down.

"Yes," Hannibal said.

But that was the thing. He hadn't offered them food, he had offered them Beverly.

"I needed to know," Brian admitted, laughing lightly. "I mean, I figured, but I needed to know."

"Do you find the comfort you seek in answers, Brian?"

"You killed her."

"In my own way, I was honoring her."

Is that what honor was?

No.

"No," Brian started, his jaw tense. "Killing people isn't honoring them. Tearing people limb by limb isn't honoring them." There was no beauty in death. there was no depth in death. there was no happily ever after or dramatic character growth. There was just a void and bullshit. That's all this was. That's all this fucking was. "You killed her because you were selfish. Because in your own fucked up head you can justify taking the life of someone who didn't deserve it at all. you kill on a whim, you kill for pleasure. You take lives. You took her. life." And it was horrible. And he needed to feel every ounce of it. "She was a person. She was a person, with lungs and a heart like the rest of us. She was a person. You can't just take human lives because it serves you."

And Zeller's loss was nothing. It was nothing compared to the loss of human life. Beverly had been murdered, she had been robbed of her agency, and she had been put on display for everyone to see. Hannibal had robbed her of personhood and turned her into a warning, into a symbol. He had stolen the identity of someone in the most horrible way imaginable and that was the most unforgivable thing.

"You try to put yourself above monsters, but know you are the worst kind." Brian pauses. "You robbed her of being a person, made her just another prop in your story, and it's disgusting. You robbed a woman of her life to serve yourself? Will? Jack? Me? Jimmy? You're just as bad as every other killer that has been in here." Maybe he was worse.

"Jack has his own army with you and Jimmy on his side." Hannibal considers something for a moment, then says. "The Archangels Raphael and Ariel in his own lab."

"Why are you here?" Brian asks, plainly. "You had every chance to get away so why?"

"I thought you would have figured it out already. Price has mentioned you were a romantic." A pause. "Perhaps it is love. How beautiful love can be, and how we might change ourselves to fit its design. Love acts to bring out what is already true. We, humans, are cruel and selfish beings, but we are all willing to do anything to be loved. "

That was why.

The lab goes silent again. Eventually, Jimmy makes his way back in. Hannibal is escorted out. Zeller and Price work in silence and when they're done they clean in silence. Price is the first to hang his lab coat and Zeller follows a few moments later. They move like planets, bound by gravity or some other invisible force that holds this together.

They leave the lab, leave the building. They get in the car and Brian drives this time. They turn on the radio and leave it playing. Jimmy looks out his window and Brian looks at the road up ahead.

Hannibal has been caught. 

Life can return to normal now.

Brian and Jimmy can rest for the first time in what is somewhere between never and forever. Whatever it was, at least they could rest without the weight of the world on their shoulders. It was getting tiring.

They're on a mostly empty highway when Brian says. "I'm an uncle now."

"Your sister?"

"Yeah. When we were in the lab," Brian confirms, his voice changes its cadence and softens. He's happy. He's happy and maybe it's wrong for him to be happy when there is all of this death behind them when they are coming out marked too, but in spite of death, life continued.

Jimmy turns to look at Brian. He is smiling. Family had always been easy to him. Even if he hadn't been able to see them recently, he was the good son, the one that all families wanted. He always stayed in touch, always found time, always found ways to be loving. It was a reassuring thing to see, even if Jimmy couldn't relate.

For Jimmy, family had never been that clear-cut.

"Well, tell her I said congratulations!"

"We're skyping tomorrow, actually. you can join if you want. Tell her yourself."

"I don't want to intrude," Jimmy says.

And like it's no problem, Brian replies. "You're family Jim, they'll be thrilled to see you."

A pause.

"Is this your way of asking to use my computer?" Jimmy jokes. His way of saying okay.

"I figure if I entrap you in the family celebration I have a valid excuse. I don't get how that thing works so fast." 

"Well, first of all, I don't keep every file I've ever gotten on-"

"Okay, well every file is a bit of an exaggeration."

"I don't get how you do it," Jimmy insists. "For the neat freak, your desktop is a mess!"

"I have a system." 

"No, you don't."

"Okay. At least I don't store Yeti erotica on there."

"Oh, so you're back to this now? First of all, it was bigfoot, actually. Secondly, that was on my phone."

"I mean, it would be the same species, right?'

"Well, Genus is probably closer, right? They have noticeable differences, live in different climates so body temperature would probably differ. That's not to mention the different dietary restrictions. They may actually be more dissimilar than alike."

"So a Hare and Rabbit situation?"

"Exactly."

"Well, would it have any difference? Like-"

"Most authors don't think that far, but probably."

Brian pauses, then shakes his head and says. "Jesus." He laughs. "We're never telling anyone we discussed this, right?'

"Absolutely not," Jimmy confirms, laughing too.

The car goes silent again.

"You always wanted to be a dad, didn't you?" Jimmy asks, although he already knows what the answer is. Brian had mentioned it briefly a few times. He always seemed to have his life planned out.

But the real question now was: Would he be able to?

After all of this death and guilt. Could he still want to?

"Yeah," Brian starts. "Yeah, something like that anyway."

And Jimmy knew that meant he wasn't really sure either.

Jimmy turned up the radio, filling the silence with a sound that carried them somewhere else.

Maybe this was the start of the worst for them. Maybe they would never recover. 

Maybe reality was waiting outside of a car door to come for the two of them and take away anything good again.

But for now, this didn't matter. For now, it was them and the song.

_I see the crystal raindrops fall_

_And the beauty of it all_

_Is when the sun comes shining through_

_To make those rainbows in my mind_

_When I think of you sometime_

_And I wanna spend some time with you_

_Just the two of us_

_We can make it if we try_

_Just the two of us_

_(Just the two of us)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> only a few chapters left everyone!! i plan to wrap this little story up new years eve/new years day. to everyone who has followed me on this crazy month journey, whether you were giving feedback on chapters, or just joined recently: thank you. making this fic has been the experience of a lifetime and i'm so excited to give these characters an ending that you could hopefully all be happy with.
> 
> as always please feel free to leave a kudos and comment. i love interacting with you guys! until next week!stay safe <3


	11. Chapter 11

A pair of shoes move across a hard-tiled floor, followed by two large roller cases. If one didn’t know any better, they may have assumed that these shoes were worn by someone of immense importance to the larger story at play: a strict and stressed-out boss, or some genius but reclusive professor.

Instead, these shoes belonged to Jimmy price, who was wheeling his hard-shell evidence kit behind him down a long corridor.

Jimmy had learned to move with purpose, utterly no-nonsense. In the years since Hannibal’s whole speech and later incarceration, he had become “The Man You Call.”

It was nice getting some respect for once.

Jimmy made his way into a preparation room. Jack had arranged for him to meet with the funeral home’s mortician. This would have been fine if said mortician had been in the preparation room when Jimmy arrived. Naturally, of course, this wasn’t the case, so Jimmy was left examining the fingertips of a praying-hands sculpture until he caught a glimpse of the mortician walking by.

“I was told you were told I was coming,” Jimmy said, as he turned to face the mortician. He was an officious looking man, and annoyingly enough he was carefully scanning Jimmy’s credentials as though he was looking for some sign of an imposter. “Were you not told?”

The two moved in front of the body. Still not removing his eyes from Jimmy’s ID, the mortician replied. “Your office or agency called me, of course, but last night we had to get the police to remove an obnoxious flame-haired woman trying to take pictures.” Ah. Freddie. “I’m being very careful. I’m sure you understand, Mr. Price.”

“Agent. Special,” Jimmy clarified, wearing his position like a badge of honor.

“Special Agent Price. The bodies were only released to us at one o'clock this morning, and the funeral is at five this afternoon. We simply can’t delay it.”

“This won't take long,” Jimmy says, no patience in his voice when he takes his ID back. “I'll need one reasonably-intelligent assistant, if you have one. Have you touched the bodies yourself, Mr. Lombard?”

“No.”

“Find out who has. I'll have to print them all.”

Jimmy snaps on latex gloves. Then, there is a great clacking at the door as Brian Zeller enters. He is overwhelmed with two heavy cases, plus a camera bag and tripod.

Earlier in the chapter, one may recall that Jimmy was at his peak. He was respected, moved with confidence and ease. By all standards, Jimmy was now very much considered “The man to be.”

This didn’t exactly translate with Brian. Even if he had gotten his own place in the three year gap.

“Cancel the reasonably-intelligent assistant, mine just showed up,” Jimmy said, as he walked over to Brian.

“I can’t help you with your thing. I’ve got a thing,” Brian replies, taking the gear off and pushing it aside.

“What thing do you got?”

“I'm reconstructing teeth from bite marks on Mrs. Leeds and this uh-” Brian cuts himself off, fishing around his pockets until he recovers a plastic bag. “Cheddar cheese wheel thing we found in her refrigerator. The tooth fairy was feeling peckish.”

“Well, then. We'll double-Dutch. Woman's got to get in the ground.”

Zeller and Price turned back to look at the mortician who's eyes had gone wide. He looked tired, as though he had just played a tennis match, or more accurately as though he had just witnessed one.

“Not his assistant, by the way,” Brian states.

Dead silence.

“We get to work now, right?” Brian asks, leaning in to whisper to Jimmy.

“Yes.”

“Awesome. Yeah. What I thought.”

* * *

  
CLOSE ON THE BODY BAG.

It is unzipped revealing Mrs. Leeds.

CLOSE ON AN EQUIPMENT CASE.

It is opened. Price and Zeller pulled evidence gathering tools and prepared them for use.

CLOSE ON FINGERNAILS.

Mrs. Leeds’ fingernails are checked for prints. One, then another…

CLOSE ON BITE MARKS.

Measured and Photographed by Zeller.

CLOSE ON A STARING DEAD EYE.

Jimmy tries to take fingerprints from the cornea of Mrs. Leeds’ eye. Then her other eye — with an eight-ball hemorrhage blackening the white. It is enough for Jimmy to see himself reflected in it, and then, as he moves, something else —

The fine lines of a partial thumbprint. Jimmy smiled as though he were a hunter with his prey.’

With utter concentration, he lifted the print.

“Voilà,” Jimmy said.

Zeller and Price looked at the print bewildered.

* * *

Zeller and Price are back in the lab. They flank the illustration of the fingerprint on the wall behind them. They are staring quizzically at…

“It's a partial. Probably a thumb,” Jimmy said, looking at Jack.

Will is back. Are they going to mention it?

“Jimmy, you’re the light of my life.”

Ah. Okay. Not mentioning it.

“I know,” Jimmy replied with an overconfidence that was natural from years of friendship. “The print's smudged. Came off Mrs. Leeds's eye. Never did that before. Never would've seen it, but it stood out against an eight-ball hemorrhage.”

Then, Jimmy really couldn’t help stealing a glance at Will.

Stumbling over his words, Jimmy finally managed. “I’m sorry. I'm just surprised you're back.”

Will looked down, still as Will Graham-y as ever. Maybe it was wrong of Jimmy to be so shocked.

Probably given Zeller leaned into Will only seconds later and said. “Welcome back.” Doing damage control as though Will had been an old friend, maybe even family. 

Brian had always had a way of welcoming people. His almost frat boy energy helped with that. Not that he ever actually was a frat boy. To Jimmy’s knowledge at least.

That being said, Brian being welcoming didn’t mean Jimmy had to be. Jimmy wasn’t going to say a thing.

A moment of complete silence passed, everyone unsure of what to do next. Will was still looking like a kicked puppy, Jimmy didn’t even need to look at Brian to hear the scolding in his head, and Jack…

“Jimmy.”

Right. Back to work.

“The mirror pieces all had those smooth prints. Forefinger on the back of the piece wedged in the labia, smudged thumb on the front,” Jimmy said.

“He polished it after he placed it, so he could see his face in there,” Will added. He was certain.

Jimmy shot Brian a subtle look.

This is weird! This is really fucking weird! You cannot possibly deny it!

Brian turned away.

Fucker.

Jimmy focused back on Jack, pretending that his own silent conversation had never happened, and said. “One in her mouth was obscured with blood. Same with the eyes. Ran an AFIS. He's not in the print index.”

“We could always do a Have-You-SeenThese-Teeth sort of APB,” Brian chimed in, rolling over a trolley. On its surface was a Lucite stand displaying a set of teeth molded in resin, with a hinge. “They’re distinctive.”

Everyone looked at the mold — a replica of Dolarhyde’s dentures.

Brian was a genius. Even looking past the long list of qualifications that had gotten him hired, he was genuinely smart. This didn’t make him any less of a dick though.

“Pegged lateral incisors. Here and here. The teeth are all crooked, a corner is missing from this central incisor. The other incisor is grooved, here,” Brian said, pointing out the specific teeth on the dentures as he spoke.

“Snaggletooth son of a bitch,” Jack mumbled.

“Yeah,” Brian paused. “And he bites. A lot.”

Will stepped forward, looking at the dentures with laser-precision focus. “He may have a history of biting in lesser assaults. May be a fighting pattern as much as sexual behavior.”

“What's he fighting, Will?” Jack asked, to which Will shook his head and buried his face in his palms.

So we’re back to that?

And as though he could read Jimmy’s thoughts, Brian shoved him with his elbow.

An awkward silence passes.

"Well, this is unbearably uncomfortable," Brian sighed, letting a stage smile fall over his face. "I'm hungry. Got places to be. I say we call it a night."

"I didn't realize there are things more important than a murderer on the loose, Z," Jack scolded.

"We're not going to catch this guy tonight. And, quite frankly, I don't want to give Will a seizure," Brian argued, turning to Will a few seconds later. "No offense, dude."

"Oh uhm...none...yeah."

"Alright, we wrap things up now, but we are all in early tomorrow," Jack started. "And Z, so help me God, if you are more than 5 minutes late tomorrow you best begin looking for a new job."

"So be 4 minutes and 45 seconds late. Got it!" Brian said, smiling entirely too wide. He found it funny. Jack not so much. "Not the time? Okay. Cool. Could have just said."

"Z."

"Right. Cleaning. On it."

That was all it took for Zeller and Price to begin clean-up as usual, though much more quietly than usual.

They were smart enough to know a big case when they saw one.

They were smart enough to know that bitemarks and shattered mirrors were only the start.

They were smart enough to see the end of the world as it was coming.

The end of the world took the shape of a boat, one that was more metaphorical than real. The end of the world was a dreamworld Noah's ark that Price and Zeller couldn't quite board.

It was still to be determined if that was a good or bad thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heyy this chapter and the next are much shorter than usual. I'm really sorry, I've genuinely been really busy between school, theatre, applications, my social life, and maintaining my mental health. it's important to remember that life needs balance and if you're not doing well you need to take some time for yourself and be kind to yourself too. thank you all for your support! I'm glad our journey has come so far and is almost at an end. as always feel free to leave a kudos or comment. ily guys!!
> 
> chapter 12: this weekend  
> final chapter(s?); December 31st/January 1st


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> brief cw here for mentions of implied alcohol abuse and homophobia

Jack Crawford, Jimmy Price, Brian Zeller, and Will Graham surround a shoebox. Zeller lifts the lid to reveal a dead cat wrapped in a towel, a dead flower between its paws.

“Found it behind the Jacobis' garage,” Zeller explains. Flower between its paws, wrapped in a dish towel, strangled.”

“The son of a bitch,” Price whispers, mostly to himself, but also knowing it wasn’t to himself at all.

“Ok. Seems like you’re more upset about the cat then you were about the children but-”

“I’m particularly fond of cats. I’m not particularly fond of children.”

“What about the Leeds’ dog? Will asks, seemingly unphased by the bickering. There had been something new in him ever since he had seen Hannibal again. Nobody mentioned it.

“It was punctured in the abdomen. Vet worked on him. He should be OK. They thought he was shot, but they didn’t find a bullet. They thought he was stabbed with an ice pick or an awl.”

“The son of a bitch.”

“He feels compelled to hurt the victims' pets before he comes to kill the family,” Will continues. He’s in his head again. They all know it. He shouldn’t be, but he is.

How badly did Jack want this guy caught?

“Eliminates an early warning system,” Jack figures. Then. “He's not just getting off a bus. He's got a plan. He stays in town overnight. He knows where he's going a day or two ahead. He's got some kind of idea. Case the place, kill the pet, then the family.”

“If the killer read a warning in the newspapers, he would probably change his method of casing a house.” Will goes silent, thinking to himself for a minute, before continuing. “We should send a private bulletin to veterinarians and animal shelters, asking for immediate reports on animal mutilations.”

“Buffalo and Chicago are four states apart. And nothing has been found to link these two families,” Jack says.

But Will knows better. 

“They were both happy.”

* * *

In the years since Hannibal’s capture, Jimmy has also gotten his own office. It was a small space, but it was nice. He had a nice desk, a good chair, and a decently sized bookshelf which was now home to a small array of reference books. More importantly though were the things that made it his: the small novelty mug on the upper left-hand corner of his desk filled with .5 pens, a small picture frame with a photo from some holiday party years ago, and of course the crude drawing of what was supposedly Batman that Brian had made on an index card.

In short, it was a nice home away from home, which was good given he hadn’t been spending much time at home recently. Not that he ever spent all that much time alone anyway. Brian would almost always stop by in the mornings or evenings, bringing with him coffee or that day’s crossword puzzles. He was Jimmy’s most frequent visitor, which is maybe why it was surprising when Will came knocking instead.

“Hey uh….Jimmy?” Will asked, cracking open the door to Jimmy’s office after knocking. “Can I just ask you a few questions or something?”

Now, Will coming to visit Jimmy’s office was weird enough on its own. They had never gotten along much in the first place, even more so after everything that had happened. Sure, he was less quiet in his dislike of Will than Brian was initially, but that didn’t mean he liked the guy. What was even weirder, was Will coming to Jimmy with any sort of question at all, especially given that they weren’t anywhere near friendly questions territory.

_Well, you are friends by association._

Right. _They_ weren’t on that level by themselves, but they did have one thing in common: Brian. For some reason, he had thought it a good idea to become friends with Will, putting Jimmy in the weird position of not-quite-Will’s-friend but also not-quite-Will’s-enemy. It left a weird grey area where Will maybe wasn’t in the position to be asking questions, but Jimmy would answer out of politeness anyway because a friend of a friend is technically sort of a friend. Sort of.

“Sure,” Jimmy responded. “You can sit down if you want.”

“Right. Thanks.”

“Hm.”

Will took his seat in the chair in front of Jimmy’s desk. From here Jimmy could see how much his posture had changed since they first met. Sure, he still slouched and averted eye contact, but there was something much more intentional in it now. He moved through the world with a level of awareness, not only of others but of how others perceived him. 

They had all been changed by Hannibal, Will most of all, Jack argued.

Jimmy wasn’t sure he believed that.

“What did you want to ask about?” Jimmy asked, moving his eyes away from Will.

In the same way that Will was aware, Jimmy was aware.

Everyone was a performer now, Jimmy just had the advantage of having been one for a much longer time.

“Have you ever fallen in love with somebody you really weren’t supposed to?”

_Oh._

_Oh._

So that was why Will had come to Jimmy.

“I don’t know,” Jimmy responded. The answer was different than it would have been even ten years ago. Ten years ago he was still much more of a nervous wreck despite having been out for some time. Ten years ago things were much worse, at least mentally, for Jimmy. The external world was bad enough with the lingering stares during conversations about marriage and kids, not to mention the number of comments that came his way for just being gay, but it had been his head that had gotten to him worst.

There were things that made scientific sense. Scientifically, it was normal. Scientifically, there was no great cosmic torture awaiting him when he died. Scientifically, Jimmy was just a man, one who happened to like other men, but science still wasn’t a ruling factor when it came to fear.

Fear was what made the worst of people. 

It had made him angry, and sad too.

It had made him feel irrational.

There had been more nights spent up pondering religion and possibility, nights spent up hoping that nothing bad awaited, than Jimmy would have ever liked to admit. There were nights spent thinking about the possibility of going back into the closet, not that it would make him feel any less horrible. There were nights when he went over every social interaction in his life, lingering on the things that had been “wrong” by he-didn’t-even-know-who’s standard. There had been nights when it had just been him, and he wished that everything could change, and they never did.

But things had gotten better.

Progress was slow to come, but little by little it was there. Maybe people got quieter, or maybe Jimmy just learned to tune it out. When Jimmy had originally come out to Jack he was still more than a little terrified, but it was the feelings of ease and comfort that came after that had impacted him longest. In retrospect maybe it was silly of Jimmy to expect anything less than Jack giving him a hug and being as accepting as a person could possibly be, but again: fear isn’t always rational.

Jimmy got happier, or as happy as anyone could be given his job. Struggles had more to do with the nature of the field than who he was. He was able to find great friends who supported him, even if he maybe wasn’t always deserving of it. Eventually, more people came out too, and some didn’t at all.

Yeah, he still remembered the shock on Brian’s face when Beverly introduced her girlfriend for the first time.

Maybe Jimmy had been shocked too. Not by Beverly having a girlfriend, but by how much things had changed.

Maybe he had changed too.

Had it all been for the better?

“I don’t think there really is such a thing as falling in love with the wrong person,” Jimmy said when he was finally sure of himself. “Love is a chemical reaction in the brain. It can happen for a number of reasons. But I think, even beyond that, love is something that we need. It’s how we stay alive. It may hurt like a bitch. It may leave you feeling irrational. It may leave you feeling selfish and clumsy. It may make you wish that you never opened up to the idea of love. But is there anything else that can ever compare?”

And love came in many different forms. Love came in the form of sharing the last piece of bread with somebody. It came in the form of laughter after long nights of trivia. It came in the form of asking a friend for help. It came in the form of musicians raising their bow to a violin for the first time, just as it came in the form of a too-eager scientist making a connection over a body for the thousandth time. It came in the form of life and it came in the form of loss. It came in the size of something big enough to swallow the universe whole, but also something small enough to be kept in a pocket for reassurance. It came differently for everyone.

But most of all it came quietly, then loudly, then you adjusted it.

Because love wasn’t just a feeling. It was something that had to be built, something that had to be cared for. 

And love was only ever wrong if you let it be.

“We’re all at different stages in our life, Will, but that’s my answer to you now.” It was one that Jimmy could be happy with.

“I don’t know if I can. I don’t know if it will be right.”

“Maybe it won’t be, but that’s okay,” Jimmy decided. “Being in love. Being alive. Being human. These aren’t exact sciences, Will. They aren’t as black and white as they seem. But you can’t spend the rest of your life calculating, Will. You can’t just **want** something. You have to want **something**.”

“I really don’t know what that means.”

Jimmy studied Will’s face. Then. “I think you actually just realized for the first time.” A pause. “Don’t be afraid that it won’t be perfect. Be afraid that it won’t be at all.”

Silence passed between the two. Maybe Will came to a realization. Maybe Jimmy did too. In some way, they had both been changed by this conversation, and they always would be.

For better or for worse.

“Yeah.” Will said, looking somewhere far away from where the two of them were, and as he spoke he smiled, sort of. “Thank you. I was uh- I didn’t really know if I should...could come to you or not."

“Anytime,” Jimmy decided, standing up. “Well, anytime before-”

“Why do I definitely feel like I’m interrupting something?”

“It’s because you are,” Jimmy says, not even needing to look up to know that the interrupting voice was Brian.

“Actually, I was just getting ready to go,” Will stated, getting up from the chair. He looked at Jimmy one last time, considered something in his head, then said. “Thank you.” 

“No problem.”

And as quietly as he had entered, Will had gone. Maybe forever.

“What was that all about?” Brian asked as soon as Will was out of earshot, putting on his best comic voice.

For better or for worse.

“Honestly? I can't say I’m entirely sure myself,” Jimmy replied, taking a coin out of his pocket and flipping it. “Tails.”

“Again.”

“Tails.”

“Again”

“Tails.”

“Again.”

“Heads.” Brian smiles. “You believed that? Obviously, I’m fucking with you. Of course, it’s tails.”

“It always is.”

“Except for when it isn’t.”

“But except for when it isn’t, it always is,” Brian started. “Except for when it isn't.”

That was exactly it.

“Not to rush your moment, but I DVR’d Who Wants to Be a Millionaire so-”

“We should go?”

“If you want.”

“Where else would I be?”

“Where wouldn’t you be?”

Jimmy thought. “England. I don’t believe in it anyways.”

“What?”

“England,” Jimmy repeated. “Just a conspiracy of cartographers.”

"A conspiracy?" Brian gives Jimmy a look then laughs.

For better or for worse. 

“Alright. I’ll meet you in the parking lot in 5?”

“Give me 10?” Jimmy started. “I just want some time alone.”

Brian nodded and then left.

It was Jimmy and himself again. 

He tidied up the papers on his desk a little. Then he sat for a second. 

Alone by himself, he thought of how hard he had come.

A few years sober now. He had somehow gotten through the worst years of his life maybe ever without a drink.

He was happier. He knew he was happier. He felt more secure in who he was and what he did. He had everything to show for it.

And he couldn’t have gotten through it alone. No, he had the help of the people around him. Of Brian, of Jack, of Beverly before she passed.

More himself, maybe. Maybe he was more himself. And maybe he was less himself at the same time.

_For better or for worse._

_For better or for worse?_

He turned off the light and exited.

For better or for worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so by now you have all probably realized that I'm going to be breaking the 13 chapter format and will in fact be uploading a 14th chapter as an epilogue. it's going to be a bit different than the rest of the work but I hope you guys enjoy it! i also really hope you guys enjoy this chapter because I really wanted to see will getting more time with other lgbt characters and I don't know i just thought it would be cool for him and jimmy to get to talk and help each other out as people with two different but also shared experiences. as always feel free to leave a kudos/comment if you like!! stay safe y'all <3
> 
> final upload dates  
> dec 31st: chapter 13  
> January 1st: epilogue


	13. Chapter 13

Zeller and Price stood upon a rock at the end of the world.

They stood on a rock somewhere between reality and memory. They stood on a rock, too present to ever fully be a memory but too haunted to ever be anything more. They stood on a rock that had been tainted by the blood which had collected in the sediment and the violence that had occurred upon it. 

“It’s kind of funny,” Zeller said at one point, trying to force a laugh. But was there anything funny? Was there anything poetic in what had been left behind?

He never continued the thought.

So Zeller and Price stood together. And Apart.

And they were alone with only each other.

Zeller and Price stood somewhere between reality and memory, never to fully be themselves, not anymore at least. Zeller and Price stood as an object, a singular unit upon a cliff that didn’t care about them, a singular unit in a world that didn’t care about them. They stood bloodied, none of their blood having yet been spilled, but all of it guaranteed.

One day the coin would fall.

One day they would die.

And in that way, they were dead. They had died long ago.

“They lived, didn’t they?” Zeller asked. Or maybe it was Price who had asked. It had never mattered much anyway. 

And whoever the other was, they responded. “I’m not sure.”

“I had a feeling you would say that.”

In the wake of their apocalypse, Will and Hannibal had left behind uncertainty for Zeller and Price. And as Will and Hannibal fell from the cliff, they built a new Hell.

Uncertainty was fitting torture for scientists and comedians, wasn’t it? To be a scientist, to be a comedian, was to strive for complete control. Control over life, control over the stage. So what happened when control was lost? What happened when all knowledge was lost? 

Scientists and comedians could laugh in the face of God. There was nothing to fear in a faceless being that didn’t exist or didn’t care enough to prove otherwise. There was nothing to fear when there was always free will, another universe, another sketch. But what happened when that God made itself known? What happened when God came as blood and cursed out the archangels?

What happened when Zeller and Price realized they would never be alive again?

What happened when Zeller and Price realized they may never be themselves again?

What happened when Zeller and Price realized they may have never been in the first place?

Zeller and Price stood on a cliff, one that resembled a chessboard more than anything else. They stood as pawns in the game, having never held much importance anyway. Kings and Queens had their kingdoms. Pawns existed, identical to one another until they ceased to exist at all.

Hours passed, or minutes, or days, or seconds.

Jack walked up to Zeller and Price wordlessly, staring out at the world with them, before inhaling to ask. “Anything to report?”

“They’re not dead, Jack.” Price?

“Not for sure, at least.” Zeller?

Jack sighed, shaking his head. “I figured as much.”

And they were all doomed, they all had been bloodied and bruised, but it wasn’t the same.

Jack still had himself. He had his name. He had his face. He had a future.

Zeller and Price had each other. 

And no control.

Zeller and Price had each other.

_ For better or for worse? _

Zeller and Price had each other. Always. Not themselves.

They had one story to be shared, but sharing got exhausting after a while, didn't it?

“We’re wrapping things up. Meet me out front,” Jack said. Then, he walked away.

So Zeller and Price walked away too, moving through the crime scene like ghosts. They were already dead, and so they moved like it, beyond all of the nameless agents and tape, beyond the rocks stained with blood, beyond the barriers of the house. They moved like ghosts until they were, even when they weren’t at the same time.

There was still that boat in the distance, mentally at least. Zeller and Price weren't aboard, but they were still seasick. They could still feel the weakness in their knees and the world becoming dizzier.

A while into their friendship, Zeller had learned that Price was quite fascinated with old sailor stories, or was it the other way around?

Either way, both Zeller and Price could remember that the stories were always about the dangers of the sea. They could remember that the men ended up mad or dead.

They could remember that there were no happy endings.

Maybe they had gotten too reckless with the sea themselves.

Zeller and Price wandered as ghosts at sea until they got to the front door until they got to Jack, their captain, and their fearful trip was done.

Was that a poem?

_ O, Captain! Their captain! _

"They're declaring this a closed case," Jack said after a while. Zeller and Price had already known.

There was nothing to suggest that Will and Hannibal had survived, nothing but words spoken and the vague feeling that even the survivors had died.

Whatever it was. It wasn't enough, was it?

"I'm sorry, for dragging you two-" Jack started, but he was cut off by Zeller hugging him, by Brian hugging him as tight as he possibly could. Still hugging when Jack started to cry, and maybe when he did too.

That was why Brian had been hired, his degrees and certificates aside, he was a good person. He cared. It was under layers of a rude demeanor. But in moments like these, he just knew what to do. 

Because Jack was family. And he would do anything for family.

Price, who had never been as keen on hugs, stood back and watched. Jack knew that Brian's forgiveness was his as well. 

And they all had blood on their hands, the blood of themselves, the blood of others, but they had to make things feel okay before the curtains closed.

When the hug had run its course, Brian inhaled then said. "Is it the wrong time to say I thought it was kinda romantic?"

Jack broke off the hug, wiping his eyes as he moved away. "Z, don't tell me we need to get you counseling now too."

"What? All I'm saying is they fell off a cliff in each other's arms all Romeo and Juliet style, and I'm not supposed to be envious? Sorry."

"Romeo and Juliet died of poison," Jimmy corrected.

"Oh. I'm sorry. I didn't realize I was talking to William Shakespeare here," Brian scoffed, looking at Jimmy. "Do you have a comparable death?"

"I mean, Hamlet comes closest."

"Is that the 'Goodnight, sweet prince' one?"

"Mhm."

A pause. "Didn't one of them live in that one?"

"Well, this is basically Schrödinger's murder so it counts."

  
  


"Yeah. No. It doesn't, buddy."

"Did you guys rehearse this?" Jack asked before Jimmy could butt in again.

"His idea," Brian replied.

"My idea," Jimny admitted. "We memorized lines in the car. Ran into some trouble because Brian can't do iambic pentameter but-

"Okay." Brian cut him off.

Humor always worked.

And then it didn't.

Because after a comedy show ended there was always silence. The silence of leaving behind comfort. The silence of accepting that whatever came next, it wouldn't feel as safe as these moments. Silence held the weight of all the things that people carried.

And oh, had they failed.

They had failed.

They had failed.

They had failed.

They had failed to stop Hannibal, they had failed to stop Will. These were the things they carried. They had failed, and now they could never live normal lives again. These were the things they carried. The only story they would ever tell was the story of Will and Hannibal. These were the things they carried. Now, Zeller and Price were characters. They would be characters until they were taken offstage forever. They would die as they lived: unimportant, indistinguishable. They were no longer granted the freedom to die as themselves.

They had failed and now all the blood on their hands was for nothing.

"I don't want you two feeling responsible for this."

"We're just as responsible as you, Jack," Jimmy replied. Maybe more so. "We're not kids."

No. Zeller and Price weren't children. They were adults. Adults with functioning minds. Adults who could always comprehend the severity of their situation and had chosen time and time again. They were adults who just couldn't give up. Adults who had been fucking elitist and flawed.

Adults who never took responsibility.

That's what the lab coats were, wasn't it? A way to shrug off responsibility. A way to hide under the guise of science while continuing to partake in this game.

But Will had been smarter. He had seen Zeller and Price slip their chips onto the table.

If they wanted to play as scientists, they would get the pain of scientists.

And all certainty was gone.

Eventually, Jack departed. Hugging Zeller, then Price. Maybe it was the other way around. It didn't matter. Price had opened his home to Jack, then Zeller did the same. Maybe it was the other way around. It didn't matter. They said their goodbyes, Zeller and Price at once, or they didn't say goodbye at all. It didn't matter.

Zeller and Price stayed until they were the last ones on the scene until they stopped breathing and their hearts stopped. They stayed until they lingered as ghosts, existing somewhere between reality and memory because all that they were now was memory. They stayed until everything else was dead, and then they stayed some more.

Maybe they would haunt this place forever. They would stay and trace all the steps that Will and Hannibal took. They would stay and solve the mystery. They would stay and be the heroes.

That was where Zeller and Price failed. There were no heroes.

And there was no more to life than this. Than waiting. Sitting in wait. Waiting to die. Waiting to be killed. Waiting to fade fully.

"When did we get here?"

"I don't know."

"Oh. How did we get here."

"I don't know that either."

"Where are we going?"

Where were Zeller and Price going? If anywhere.

Was this what being dead felt like? Directionlessness?

Or was this just what being Zeller and Price felt like?

"The sun is starting to set."

And it was their cue. Their story was over. 

"Do you want to go home?"

"It's been years."

"Has it?"

"Must be."

"When did we first meet?"

"Years ago."

"You don't remember?"

"I don't remember anything."

"You don't remember anything?"

"Not without you."

Zeller and Price were bound. They were bound to leave this together. They were bound to stay together. They were bound to be half of each other. Zeller and Price. Not Zeller. Not Price. Zeller and Price. 

"Do you want to go home?"

"You asked that already."

"I did?"

"No. I didn't. You did."

"Oh. I forgot."

"You always do." A pause. "Forgot what?"

"I don't remember."

Silence.

"That's it, then?" Zeller or Price started. "The sun's going down. Or the Earth's coming up. Not that it makes any difference " Pause. "What was it all about? When did it begin?" Pause. No answer. "We didn't hurt anyone, did we?"

"I can't remember."

"There must have been a moment where we could have said no. Could have stopped this."

"We'll know better next time."

"Will we?"

And Zeller and Price were together. And they would exit together. As unimportantly as they had entered when the story started.

They sat together, leaning into each other, as they watched the sunset.

And as the sun disappeared under the trees, Zeller and Price disappeared too.

And as the world crumbled, maybe they were together. Maybe they disappeared together, and maybe they didn’t quite want to, but it didn't really matter either way. 

The story of Will and Hannibal was over.

And as all good comedic characters did, Zeller and Price took their bow.

The curtain closed and the world went quiet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> final chapter up tomorrow! thank you all so much for your support throughout this fic, it has meant the world to me!! as always feel free to leave a kudos or comment if you want! i love reading them and interacting as much as possible <3 stay safe everyone and have a happy new year. let's end our old stories and start anew.


	14. Epilogue #1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A "/" is used to indicate an interruption.
> 
> Pauses may be held for however long is needed. Time is irrelevant here.
> 
> Beats should feel like something. They are wanting something.

_(A porch in a post-apocalyptic world. It doesn’t look apocalyptic, necessarily. The trees are still verdant, the birds still chirping, but the porch itself has been worn down. This was a place that was home once. This was a place that would never really be home again. There is no time. There is no motion. And on the world’s end porch, Jimmy Price and Brian Zeller sat perfectly together.)_

Zeller: I guess that means we’re not done then.

Price: Well, we’re here. Aren’t we?

_( Beat. )_

Zeller: You’ve always liked your sunrises, haven’t you?

Price: You haven’t?

Zeller: I never really stopped to analyze time much.

Price: Oh. Maybe you should.

Zeller: Yeah. Maybe I should.

_( Beat. )_

Zeller: Hey, Jim?

Price: Hm.

Zeller: Do you think you could kill me?

Price: No. Why?

Zeller: Do you think I could kill you?

_( Beat. Price looks to Zeller for a second, seriously considering the question. Did Zeller have it in him to kill Jimmy? To kill at all?)_

Price: No.

Zeller: Why not?

Price: No. I think you give too much of yourself to ever make a good killer.

Zeller: I give too much?

Price: I mean, we both do. In our own ways. _(_ _Pause.)_ We're comedians. Isn't that why we do it? Love? 

Zeller: Does that really change much?

Price: It changes our nature, I think.

Zeller: There's still blood on our hands.

Price: You and I know well enough that there was always bound to be.

Zeller: But what if there was never bound to be? 

Price: What do you mean?

Zeller: Why did you come outside this morning, Jim?

_(Beat. A confession. One that holds just as much weight as the confession of a murderer.)_

Price: I wasn’t satisfied with our ending.

Zeller: Why did you stay here? Even as I walked up the sidewalk?

Price: Because I knew you felt the same way. 

_( Beat. )_

Price: We’ve never really been bound, have we?

Zeller: No. No, we haven’t. 

_( Beat. There was always going to be bloodshed in the game. Zeller and Price were never going to escape as clean as they had entered. It wasn’t the knowing that was hard, it was recognition. The recognition that maybe they weren’t the same people they had entered the game as. That maybe they were no longer good people at all._

_The recognition that maybe powerlessness had been an act all along.)_

Zeller: I guess we're guilty too.

Price: From some angle, I think we always have been.

Zeller: Is that angle ours?

Price: In time won't every angle be? 

Zeller: That doesn't make us blameless.

Price: It doesn't make us any more guilty either, Bri.

_(Beat. Bri. There's familiarity in the nickname. The familiarity of two best friends. The familiarity of the people who have endured everything together. It is also in that familiarity that all things start to unravel, that a single direction is revealed.)_

Price: We cross our bridges when we get to them.

Zeller: _(_ _Looking at Price.)_ And this is ours?

_( Beat. Even the most familiar nicknames could grow bitter. Even homes could become unwelcoming. Even the best things came to their end._

_And running was always an option, but not anymore.)_

Zeller: We're never going to have normal lives. Are we?

Price: After all of this? No. _(_ _Pause._ _)_ No. I doubt it.

Zeller: I was scared you would say that.

Price: Would you rather I lie?

_( Beat. )_

Zeller: No. I think you're the only person in my life I trust to be honest. Completely honest.

Price: You know that's misguided, right?

Zeller: Maybe. _(_ _Pause.)_ But I trust you with my life. Why would I stop here?

Price: It's easier that way. Less to get your hopes up about.

Zeller: We're scientists. What do we have besides hope?

Price: No matter how irrational? Seems like bad science to me.

Zeller: Hey. _(_ _Zeller elbows Price. There is comfort there. A quickly fading comfort.)_ Especially when it's irrational.

_(Beat. It's a perfect fantasy, but not everything can exist in fantasy. Eventually, birthday candles start to run out and brains get tired of dreaming. Eventually, multiverses become of lesser importance. Eventually, there comes a time when we all must get up from the swingset, brush off our scraped knees, and continue moving forward. Eventually, we must all choose to grow up, even when it may seem that we already have, and most often when we are scared to.)_

_(Reality crawls back in.)_

Zeller: I keep having this awful feeling that I'm never going to be able to escape any of this. Will. Hannibal. _(_ _Pause.)_ And I have this horrible feeling that I'm going to live, and I'm going to be stuck in this, and that one day this is going to become the only story I can tell. And I'm going to keep repeating that story like a broken record. And I'm going to keep losing more and more of myself each time. And it sucks! _(_ _Laughter. Relief? Resignation?)_ It sucks so fucking much. But you know what's worse? The fact that I know I can do nothing about it. _(_ _Pause._ _)_ I am going to be this…result of Will and Hannibal as long as I live and then one day I'll die.

_( Beat.)_

Zeller: I am never going to escape all that love I have for you and Bev, am I?

Price: Love isn't something you can fall into or out of. It just is. _(Pause.)_ I read a paper, actually. All about our brains, and how it functions in love, and how it can start anywhere. Love is a positivity response. It makes us light up. _(Pause. Price looks at Zeller. Zeller isn't buying it.)_ Well, it makes our brains light up under a CAT scan at least.

Zeller: You are the last person I expect to be reading a paper on love.

Price: Will came in to talk the other day. Asked me if I've ever been in love with someone I shouldn't have.

Zeller: Great. He really spared you the subtlety.

Price: Well, when I told him to chase love I didn't mean off a cliff, okay? Figure of speech.

( _Price laughs. Then Zeller too. Things aren't back to normal. They never will be. But this can be good. Just for a few minutes more.)_

Zeller: You know what? I take it back. You are exactly the type of person I expect to read an academic paper on love.

Price: I'm honored, truly.

Zeller: Okay. You are / so much to deal with.

Price: I'm so much to deal with? Look at / you!

Zeller: Alright. We're going to wake up the neighbors.

Price: Oh. Fuck them.

Zeller: Dude!

Price: We almost died. The least we can get is a morning to ourselves.

Zeller: You know what's actually scary? I don't put it past you to fight with community board moms.

Price: Oh. I've done it before. And I would do it again. They cry easily.

Zeller: Oh. Dude. Come on. What did you do?

Price: Nothing! _(_ _Pause.)_ Okay. I may have had a few things to say.

Zeller: You? Never. _(_ _Pause._ _)_ How bad? Pig baby bad or?

Price: Worse. Much much worse.

Zeller: Fuck. _(_ _Zeller laughs again._ _)_ You are easily the most horrible person I know.

Price: And yet here you are laughing!

Zeller: I never claimed I wasn't a close second.

Price: _(_ _Smiling._ _)_ Right.

_( Beat. )_

Zeller: Well, we got dark there, didn't we?

Price: Mm. Epilogue appropriate character diversion. _(Pause.)_ If nothing else at least we're incredibly genre-savvy.

Zeller: You know what? We are and we don't get enough appreciation for that.

Price: Flexible too. Nobody appreciates funny ones like they used to.

_(Beat. Laughing. Smiling. Then quiet.)_

Zeller: You've been doing that thing less.

Price: What thing?

Zeller: You know the one. When you get all stuck in your head and stuff. 

_(Zeller and Price look at each other. Recognition. Recognition which was the most terrible thing in the world. Recognition which was so terrible because it usually only happens before we admit to being horrible, horrible people. Recognition which meant losing control, which meant giving yourself up for the chance that you might let someone in. Recognition which meant another person to see the worst parts of yourself, the parts that you have always loathed, and hoping they would accept it too._

_But recognition was only so scary. What was scarier were all those things that came with being recognized. The being cared about, the being worried about._

_The problem of Zeller and Price was not in the fact that they just couldn't recognize each other, it was in the fact that they could. They recognized each other in a way that nobody else ever would. The problem was that recognition for them always tied them to this, to Will and Hannibal. The problem was that recognition for them would always be a painful experience. The problem was in the fact that they had always recognized each other and maybe they always would_

_And they would choose it. Again. And Again. And again. And again. And again. And again And again._

_And they would do it until they tore each other and themselves apart. That was the life of a duo.)_

Zeller: I need to get away from you.

Price: I know.

_(Beat. It wasn't until resentment started to set in that one could really predict how much there was. It wasn't until that confession that Zeller and Price could fully begin to comprehend all the ways they had blurred together, and all the ways they had destroyed each other, and all the ways they had become each other, and all the ways they had lost each other too. It wasn't until that confession that resentment became as real as the fall, as real as their powerlessness, as real as the bodies they had taken apart in the lab. It wasn't until the confession that they realized they hated each other, but there was still love there too._

_Maybe, just maybe, something could still be saved.)_

_(Price puts a hand into his pocket, then both hands behind his back, then holds his fists out. Zeller taps one fist. Price opens it to show a coin. He gives it to Zeller.)_

_(Price puts his hand back into his pocket. Then both hands behind his back, then holds his fists out. Zeller taps one fist. Price opens it to show a coin. He gives it to Zeller.)_

_(Repeat.)_

_(Repeat.)_

_(Zeller taps a hand, changes his mind, taps the other, and Price inadvertently reveals that he has a coin in both fists.)_

Zeller: You had money in both hands?

Price: ( _Matter-of-factly.)_ Yes.

Zeller: Every time?

Price: Yes.

Zeller: _(Confused, but smiling.)_ What's the point of that?

Price: ( _Honestly.)_ I wanted to make you happy.

_(Beat. Sometimes you could care about another person and still end up on the other side of them. Sometimes you could walk through Hell with someone and still end up on the other side of them. But that didn't have to be a bad thing.)_

Price: The sun's almost up.

_(Beat.)_

Zeller: So what do we do after we cross our bridges?

Price: We burn them.

Zeller: It really is that easy then?

Price: In my experience, the first steps are always the hardest.

( _Beat. Zeller elbows Price.)_

Zeller: This isn't the end of us, you know?

Price: Are you going to keep your word?

Zeller: _(Pause. Then.)_ I think all of my futures lead back to you.

Price: And if they don't?

Zeller: Well, in that case, we're scientists. And I've never really cared about fate.

( _Beat. The first steps are hardest, but Brian stands up from the porch. He looks down at Jimmy, then, without prompting, he begins his way down the walkway and back to the sidewalk. Then.)_

Jimmy: Hey, Bri?

_(Brian turns around. Jimmy is smiling. Brian does too.)_

Jimmy: You're going to be a really good teacher

Brian: Thanks. _(Pause.)_ I can't wait to read all of your papers, highlight everything I take issue with, and hand you a stack of criticism when we meet again.

Jimmy: Just had to end on an obnoxious note, didn't you?

Brian: Would you want it any other way?

Jimmy: No. No I wouldn't.

( _Beat. The sun started to shine over the trees. Their time was up. Not because some mysterious being, or loyal audience, or even the Universe willed it. Because they willed it. Now it was their turn to embrace the future with the smiles of two people who have lived and go their separate ways.)_

Brian: Okay.

_(And Brian leaves. It is not an exit as much as it is a moving forward. When Brian is fully gone, Jimmy gets up from the porch and goes back to his front door. As he steps inside he stares out for a minute, then, as he closes the door, he rejects the audience that he maybe never needed all along.)_

_(Leaves fall from the trees as though they are plastic. The world gets a little smaller.)_

_(There is no stage anymore. And maybe there never was.)_

_(Blackout.)_

_(End of play. With that end, the start of new possibilities.)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it! The last chapter of price and zeller are (surprisingly not) dead! I hope you all enjoy this chapter, even if it is a bit different than what you were expecting. Writing this fic has helped me immensely. I've come to terms with my own use of humor, future, and concept of power because of it. I hope it can help you in a similar way if you're searching for answers.
> 
> As always, kudos and comments are super appreciated. I love interacting with you all and hearing what you thought.
> 
> Stay safe. Stay healthy. Remember you are loved. Remember you will live. <3


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